ROOSEVELT 

A M AND THE Ji M 

REPUBLIC 



BY 



JOHN W. BENNETT 




IVi^/i Photo Cover 



BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 
835 BROADWAY, ^ ^ NEW YORK 



£75/' 



I wo copiis itetesvc!'; 






Copyright. 1908. 

BY 

JOHN W. BENNETT. 



All rights reserved. 



CO:^TENTS. 



PAGE 

PREFACE i 

INTRODUCTION: Roosevelt's estimate of fa- 
mous Americans — Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
Jackson, George Clinton, Samuel Adams, Pat- 
rick Henry, Martin Van Buren, Oliver Ells- 
worth, Thomas Paine, Judge Taney, Jefferson 
Davis, and others I 

CHAPTER I. 
"Joe" Murray falls out with "Barney" Hess— "Joe" 
discovers a budding statesman — A name — An- 
cestry — Harvard — Prowess, Associates, Charac- 
teristics — New Assemblyman 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Roosevelt, the Solon — Political stress — Spoils — Cor- 
ruption — Large programme — Position of novice 
— Committees — "Finds" himself — Murphy, Bo- 
gan et al. — Civil service reform — Traction — In- 
vestigator — Reformer — Qaims — Facts — Accom- 
plishment — An incident 8 

CHAPTER III. 
Roosevelt, investigator — Practical situation — Grover 
Cleveland — Union League Club takes initiative 
— Scope of inquiry — Roosevelt's light not to be 
hidden — "Rippering" — Up- State machine and 
Tammany — Municipal home rule — Prohibition 
— Elevated Railway legislation — Accomplish- 
ment 21 



ii CONTENtS 

CHAPTER IV. PAGE 
Roosevelt makes crucial decision — Blaine — Edmunds 
—Stalwarts, half breeds, Independents — Roose- 
velt avows his partisanship 33 

CHAPTER V. 
Answers call to the wilds — Longings of hunter- 
Adding cubits to stature horizontally — Ranch- 
man — Answers partisan call — Candidate for 
Mayor of New York 38* 

CHAPTER VI. 
Civil Service Commissioner — Changes flavor of body 
— Dramatic as against quiet effort — Pug- 
nacity — In controversy with prominent men — 
Real work — Harrison — Cleveland — "Midnight" 
order of 1893 41 

CHAPTER VII. 
Enters storm center in New York — Police commis- 
sioner — Genesis — Strong — Union League Club 
— Committee of Seventy — Tammany — Police re- 
form — Civil service — Roosevelt in his element 
— Efficiency — Troubles — Quits 48 

CHAPTER Vin. 
"Head" of Navy Department — Conditions — Trials 
— Naval personnel — Difficulties — Quits 59 

CHAPTER IX. 
Leader of Rough Riders — Organization — Equip- 
ment — Regular officers — To Cuba — Las Guasi- 
mas— Race for "first blood" — Wheeler— Young 
—Wood— Roosevelt— Lawton's wrath— Losses. 69 

CHAPTER X. 
San Juan and days that followed — Wheeler makes 
proposition — Plan of advance — Spanish valor 
— Queer order to bivouac — Desperate position 
— A trap— The assault— Up to the trenches — 
Roosevelt's place— The part he played — After 
the battle— War horrors _. 81 



Contents ill 

CHAPTER XL page 

Santiago falls — Game of bluff — American luck — 

Roosevelt's round robin- — Going home 98 

CHAPTER XH. 
Roosevelt gets the nomination — Skillful political 
manipulation — Piatt and the Independents — 
Roosevelt again chooses partisanship — Good or 
bad faith? — Rough Rider campaign — Governor 
— Starts out bravely — War message — Piatt and 
Odell as advisers — Canals — Payn — Trust Com- 
pany investigation — Messages — Work unfin- 
ished — Dangers and difficulties — Piatt's magic 
ring — Estimates of Roosevelt's work — Accom- 
plishment — Quits 102 

CHAPTER XHL 
Menaced by vice-presidency — Piatt, Quay and 
Roosevelt — Woe for Senator Hanna — Roosevelt 
yields — The campaign — Roosevelt as spokesman 
— Denounces opponents, Filipinos and others — 
Wins 132 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Tragedy make^ Roosevelt president — Flight to 
Adirondacks — Dramatic entrance — Pledges — 
Civil Service — Tariff — Philippines — Conditions 
— Exploitation — Legislation against assassins — 
Roosevelt's message 139 

CHAPTER XV. 
Race problems confront administration — Booker 
Washington — Crum — Indianola — Brownsville — 
Lynch law 151 

CHAPTER XVL 
President takes up reform — Northern Securities — 
Beef — Postal scandal 156 

CHAPTER XVH. 
President captures canal site — Mr. Hay's politeness 



IV Contents 

PAGE 

—Treaty with Great Britain— Colombia— Treaty 
with latter rejected— Panama "revolts"-- 
Strange prevision — Panama Company gets mil- 
lions — Constructing the canal — Problems — 
Changes — Blunders 159 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Roosevelt revises the Monroe doctrine— Venezuela 
and Santo Domingo — Bischoffscheim and Gold- 
schmidt— State Department shields asphalt 
trust — Loomis, thrifty diplomat — Bowen hu- 
miliated — United States as receiver — Roose- 
velt's "agreement" vi^ith Morales — Senate over- 
ridden — President has his way — Uncle Sam as 
protector general 179 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Pious mastication and "benevolent assimilation" — 
Roosevelt as historian finds colonies utterly 
hopeless — Bryan's sinister influence — Filipinos 
as Apaches and Boxers — Government by presi- 
dential ukase 195 

CHAPTER XX. 
Cuba becomes free, almost — America's pledge — 
Government by military satrap — Cuba libre — 
Palma's "yellow streak" — America "preserves 
Cuban independence" 214 

CHAPTER XXL 
Battling with railway octopus — President adopts a 
Democratic party issue rejected at polls — Makes 
it his cardinal doctrine — Public mandate by 
newspaper clamor and iteration — Roosevelt- 
Chandler-Tillman-Bailey-Moody episode — New 
recruits for the Ananias Club — Aldrich acts — 
Roosevelt again demonstrates partisanship — 
Very hard labor, very small mouse 219 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Civil service reform by the president — Regaining 



Contents v 

PAGE 

lost ground — Taking care of friends — Patron- 
age as bribery — "Joe" Murray — Rough Riders 
— Harvard men — College men — Cabinet officers 
and clerks in politics 236 

CHAPTER XXHI. 
Alexander Hamilton, Roosevelt's political ideal — 
Hamilton in the Constitutional Convention — 
Praises monarchy — Outlines constitution estab- 
lishing monarchial government — Hamilton's er- 
rors — His influence on the Republic — Burr and 
Hamilton — Hamilton's strangely false prophe- 
cies 250 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Thomas Jefferson and his sinister democracy — 
How the "weaklings" won from the mighty Na- 
poleon — Roosevelt's contempt for democracy's 
leader — Things Jefferson did — Apostle of de- 
mocracy — Lincoln's tribute 271 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Our "ignorant" president, Andrew Jackson — 
Change to him change for the worse — Despic- 
able followers of Jackson — Jackson as "tool and 
figurehead" — Jackson's political methods com- 
pared with those of Roosevelt — Jackson and 
Van Buren's "expensive" government as com- 
pared with that of Roosevelt 289 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Roosevelt distrusts democracy — Rights of kings as 
logical as rights of majorities — Sanctions of 
government — Right of suffrage — Voice of peo- 
ple voice of God? 298 

CHAPTER XXVH. 
Rich and poor in politics as Roosevelt sees them — 
No abuses to correct — Poor stirred by jealousy 



VI Contents 

PAGE 

and envy — Lightning change of front follow- 
ing "muckrake" speech — Now steering "reform" 
movements 313 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Roosevelt in literature — Atavistic in theme — War 
and chase his favorite topics — First book best 
— Autobiography in books — Sublime subjective- 
ness — Mania for executive messages — Annual 
cyclopedia of universal knowledge 324 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
Roosevelt, war and peace — Glorification of war 
spirit — Conquest and commercialism — Non-re- 
sistant creed — Sermon on Mount — Rome and 
Christianity — The "true man's part" — Carl 
Schurz and Gen. Sherman comment on war — 
As a poet sees it 329 

CHAPTER XXX. 
What Roosevelt has done for Washington society — 
Greater "individuality" — More exclusiveness — 
Public receptions curtailed — The "Social Sec- 
retary"— Roosevelts refuse to meet the "mob" 
— Traveling contingent fund — White House 
expenditures 344 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
A bit of autobiography — Biographers differ 353 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
Sidelights on Roosevelt's character — Tariff — 
Friends— Ananias Club— Reformer, etc., etc... 357 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
Some recent history — "My policies" — Progress by 
states— Politicians clamor — Railway lobbyists 
as "reformers" — Roosevelt fortunate in his 
enemies— He "helps" in Chicago— Railroads fail 
^-Loeb discovers "conspiracy"— Roosevelt's tol- 



Contents vii 

„rT -I PAGE 

erance— Undesirable citizens'—Suspends pilot 
— ^port —A successor — Fleet to Pacific — 
Roosevelt "helps" Cleveland— Oklahoma consti- 
tiition— Financial panic— "Honest money"— 
Roosevelt's responsibility— What his platforms 
asserted— Different ox gored 377 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
Critical view of Roosevelt— His character, his 
ideals, his aims, his achievements— Place in his- 
tory 400 



PREFACE. 

This is not a biography of President Roosevelt. 
We are interested in Roosevelt the man only in 
so far as his peculiarities throw light upon Roose- 
velt the office-holder. 

It is our aim to journey freely along the public 
pathway followed by Roosevelt in his march 
from obscurity to eminence. We shall pick up 
on the way, and examine evidences of his in- 
fluence upon this Republic. 

In taking this excursion, we shall try to 
hamper ourselves as little as possible with the 
baggage of preconceived opinion. Our own 
opinion, we shall give for what it is worth, 
indicating where possible its foundation. Those 
who prefer to take their opinions of men, their 
political philosophy, or even their politics, blind- 
folded, would do well not to travel with us. 

Americans, as a rule, have improved upon the 
old maxim, "noblesse oblige." To persons in 
high place we prefer to apply the more com- 
fortable fiction, "The king can do no wrong." 
Having no king, many of us try to make kings 
of every popular person. Being without 
heroes, we are not discriminating as to whom we 
shall give this distinction. We might have made 
it treason to criticize those in high place, as it is 
infamous presumption to suggest that they ever 
speak unwisely. But our sense of self-restraint 
has held us back. 



n Preface 

Extraordinary authority is not hampered witH 
extraordinary responsibiUty in high places. We 
assume a divine sanction for every act of a 
person v^hom we have honored. Each word 
from the Hps of a high official contains prophet 
wisdom. Each peccadillo we find a virtue in 
disguise, each offense a scintillation of genius. 

Peans of hero worship are not especially easy 
for us, but we shall try to fulfill expectations. 
If at any time we should seem to treat the sub- 
ject of our inquiry as just an American citizen, 
with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness merely equal to those of other Ameri- 
can citizens, it will not be because we forget 
the more popular viewpoint. As for standards 
of truth and righteousness to which we shall sub- 
ject the acts of our characters indiscriminately, 
we shall make due allowance for high place and 
the trials and temptations surrounding it. The 
sequel will show whether our standards will be 
more strict or more liberal for one in authority. 

An administration which has attracted much 
attention is about to close. It has been different 
in some respects from other administrations. 
This is an excellent time to take stock and to 
inquire what influence that administration has 
had upon this Republic. Pleas are being made 
for a continuation of certain governmental poli- 
cies. We could not take better time to inquire 
whether we wish them continued. 

Your indulgence we bespeak. Walk with us 
with open mind. Let us try to get perspective in 
which near as well as distant objects appear in 
their just proportions. 



Preface iii 

Give tolerant ear, we beseech you, to our in- 
troduction. Ponder it carefully. Prejudices 
must be cleared away or sterilized. In no better 
way than by studying the opinions there ex- 
pressed can we get the viewpoint of the man we 
are about to study. Giving us a more instructive 
insight into the motives, abilities and characters 
of the nation's past great, it will aid us in 
judging more correctly the great of the present 
and of the future. 



INTRODUCTION. 

President Roosevelt has made many and 
lengthy literary excursions into various fields. 
There has he met many of the great, the good, 
the highly honored of this nation. Freely has 
he expressed his opinion of their characters, their 
services and their worth. It is interesting to 
hear him speak of them : — 

Thomas Jefferson. — *'The father of nullifica- 
tion and therefore of secession. . . . Consti- 
tutionally unable to put a proper value upon 
truthfulness." (Roosevelt's Life of Benton, 
page 95-) 

"Characteristically enough, he only showed his 
annoyance by indirect methods." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Morris, page 293.) 

^'Jefferson was using them (the alien and 
sedition laws) as handles to guide seditious agita- 
tion." (Roosevelt's Life of Morris, page 323.) 

"He (Morris) despised Jefferson for a tricky 
and incapable theorist." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, page 331.) 

"Jefferson . . . was perhaps the most 
incapable executive that ever filled the presiden- 
tial chair. . . . He was utterly unable to 
grapple with the slightest actual danger, and 
even excepting his successor, Madison, it would 
be difficult to find a man less fit to guide the 
i^tate with honor and safety." 

Roosevelt says that the burning of the Capitol 



[{ Introduction 

at Washington was as nothing compared with 
the "cowardly infamy" of Jefferson and Madison, 
who failed to take means adequate to protect it. 

James Madison.— "Excepting Jefferson we 
have never produced an executive more helpless 
than Madison when it comes to grappling with 
real dangers and difficulties." (Roosevelt's Life 
of Morris, page 348.) 

"The indignation naturally excited by the utter 
weakness and folly of Jefferson's second term 
and the pitiable incompetence shown both by him 
and his successor," etc. (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, page 344.) 

Madison's followers in the South and West. — 
*They themselves, for all their bluster, were but 
a shade less incompetent than their nominal chief 
when it came to actual work, and were shame- 
fully unable to make their words good by deeds." 
(Witness Jackson at New Orleans.) 

'The administration thus drifted into a war 
which it had neither the wisdom to avoid nor 
the foresight to prepare for." (Roosevelt's Life 
of Morris, page 348-9.) 

Congress at Madison's time. — "With almost 
incredible folly the Congress that declared war, 
voted down the bill to increase the navy by 
twenty battleships." (American Ideals, page 
260. ) 

James Monroe. — "I think he was as much of a 
failure as his predecessors (Washington, Adams, 
Jefferson and Madison), and a harsher criticism 
could not be passed upon him. Like other 
statesmen of his school, he was mighty of word, 
but weak in action ; bold to plan, but weak to per- 



Introduction iii 

form." (Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812, page 

456.) 

"A very amiable gentleman, but one who comes 
distinctly in the class of one whose greatness was 
thrust upon them." (Roosevelt's Life of Mor- 
ris, page 293.) 

President Martin Van Buren. — "Van Buren 
faithfully served the mammon of unrighteous- 
ness, both in his own state and later on at Wash- 
ington; and he had his reward, for he was ad- 
vanced to the highest office in the gift of the 
nation. He had no reason to blame his own 
conduct for his final downfall; he got just as far 
along as he could possibly get, he succeeded be- 
cause of, not in spite of his moral shortcomings; 
if he had always governed his actions by a high 
moral standard, he would probably never have 
been heard of." (Roosevelt's Life of Benton, 
page 187.) 

President Tyler. — "He was a mediocre man; 
but that is unwarranted flattery — he was a poli- 
tician of monumental littleness. . . . His 
chief mental and moral attributes were peevish- 
ness, fretful obstinacy, inconsistency, incapacity 
to make up his own mind . . . together with 
inordinate vanity . . . ." 

"His mind which was not robust at best, was 
completely dazzled by his sudden elevation, and 
his wild hopes that he could continue to keep the 
place that he had reached." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Benton, pages 239 and 257.) 

Andrew Jackson. — "Few men were ever more 
unlike than the scholarly, timid, shifty, doctrinaire 
(Jefferson) who supplanted the elder Adams, and 



IV Introduction 

the ignorant, headstrong and straightforward sol- 
dier who was victor over the younger. The 
change was the dehberate choice of the great 
mass of the people, and that it was for the worse, 
was then and has been even since, the opinion of 
most thinking men." (A sly way of paying the 
author a handsome compliment). (Roosevelt's 
Life of Benton, page 73.) 

"The public service then took its first step in 
the downward career of progressive debasement, 
and deterioration which has onlv been checked in 
our own days." (Roosevelt's Life of Benton, 
page 74.) 

Washington. — "Washington's administration 
was in error in not acting with greater decision 
about the Spanish posts." (Winning of the 
West, vol. 4, page 203.) 

"His (Monroe's) appointment (by Washing- 
ton) was an excellent example of the folly of 
trying to carry on a government on a non- 
partisan basis." (Roosevelt's Life of Morris, 
pages 301, 302.) 

President Pierce. — "Seeing him (President 
Pierce) exactly as he was — a small politician of 
low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to 
act as the servile tool of men worse than him- 
self, but also stronger and abler" . . . arguing 
in favor of slavery with "undaunted mendacity, 
moral callousity and mental obhquity; exempli- 
fying in his last message all the modes of con- 
veying untruths, direct assertion, fallacious in- 
ference and false innuendo." (Roosevelt's Life 
of Benton, page 345.) 



Introduction v 

A portion of the above is quoted from Benton 
with evident approval. 

George CHnton, Samuel Adams and Patrick 
Henry. — "They (opponents of centralized gov- 
ernment) "were followed by a lot of designing 
politicians who feared that their importance 
would be lost if their sphere of action should be 
enlarged. Among these leaders the three most 
conspicuous were, in New York, George Clinton, 
and in Massachusetts and Virginia, Samuel 
Adams and Patrick Henry." (Roosevelt's Life 
of Morris, page 128.) 

Gouverneur Morris. — "In fact throughout the 
war of 181 2 he appeared as the open champion of 
treason to the nation, dishonesty to the nation's 
creditors and subserviency to a foreign power." 
(Roosevelt's Life of Morris, pages 352 to 355.) 

Harrison Gray Otis. — "Harrison Gray Otis 
was almost as bad as Morris himself." (Roose- 
velt's Life of Morris, page 353.) 

Captain Perry. — "He certainly stands on a 
lower grade than either Hull or MacDonough, 
and not a bit higher than a dozen others." (Naval 
War of 1812, page 271.) 

Gen. Winfield Scott. — "A good general but 
otherwise a wholly absurd and flatulent person." 
(Roosevelt's Life of Benton, page 344.) 

"Timothy Pickering showed eager desire to 
stand by another country to the hurt of his own 
country's honor." (Forum, January, 1897.) 

"Oliver Ellsworth (Chief Justice of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States) of Connecti- 
cut, whose name should be branded with infamy 



VI Introduction 

because of the words he uttered." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Morris, page i6o.) 

Thomas Paine. — "So the filthy little atheist 
had to remain in prison." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, page 289.) The occasion for rejoicing 
on the part of Mr. Roosevelt, was Gouverneur 
Morris' strange indifference to the imprisonment 
of the great pamphleteer of the Revolution, in a 
French prison. There are historians who hold 
that the pen of Thomas Paine did more for the 
Revolution than was done by any other one man 
except Jefferson and Washington. Gouverneur 
Morris showed as much feeling and patriotism in 
this matter as he did in the burial of Mr. Roose- 
velt's "corsair" (John Paul Jones). 

"Judge Taney of unhappy fame." (Life of 
Benton, page 358.) 

Wendell Phillips. — "After the war and until 
the day of his death his position upon almost 
every public question was either mischievous or 
ridiculous, and usually both." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Benton, page 160.) 

Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr. — "The moral 
difference between Benedict Arnold on the one 
hand and Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis on 
the other, is precisely the difference which ob- 
tains between a politician who sells his vote 
for money and one who supports a bad measure 
in consideration of being given high place." 
_ President Polk and the Abolitionists. — "Aboli- 
tionists joined hands with Northern roughs and 
Southern slavocrats to elect the man who was, 
excepting Tyler, the very smallest of the small 
presidents who came between Jackson and Lin- 



Introduction' vif 

coin." (Observe the compliment to Harrison, 
Taylor, Filmore and the others.) 

''Owing to a variety of circumstances the 
Abolitionists have received an immense amount 
of hysterical praise which they do not deserve 
and have been credited with deeds done by other 
men whom they in reality hampered and opposed 
rather than aided." (Roosevelt's Life of Ben- 
ton, page 292.) 

Whole classes of Americans, too, came in for 
Mr. Roosevelt's emphatic disapproval. 

Jefferson's followers. — "Four fifths of the 
talent, ability and good sense of the country 
was to be found in the Federalist ranks." (Roose- 
velt's Life of Morris, page 321.) 

Cowboys, small farmers and mechanics. — • 
"When drunk on villainous whiskey of the fron- 
tier towns, they (the cowboys) cut mad antics, 
firing their pistols right and left . . . and 
indulging too often in deadly shooting aftrays, 
brought on by the incidental conduct of the mo- 
ment or some long standing grudge, or perhaps 
because of bad blood between certain ranches or 
localities. . . . They are much better fel- 
lows and pleasanter companions than small farm- 
ers or agricultural laborers; nor are mechanics 
or workmen of the big cities to be mentioned 
in the same breath." (Roosevelt's Ranch Life 
and Hunting Trail, page 10.) 

Catholics (who believe in miracles). — "Those 
persons of arrested mental development who now 
make pilgrimages to our Lady of Lourdes, had 
plenty of prototypes in the atheistic France of 



vlli Introduction 

the French Revolution." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, page 291.) 

Merchants and traders. — "He (Morris) had 
no patience with those despicable beings, the 
merchants and traders." (Life of Morris, page 
297.) 

Napoleon. — "He (Morris) fully appreciated 
Napoleon's utter unscrupulousness and marvel- 
ous mendacity." (Life of Morris, page 303.) 

Quakers (As seen by Roosevelt, historian). — 
"It is a bitter and unanswerable commentary on 
the non-resistant creed that such outrages and 
massacres as those committed on the helpless 
Indians, were more numerous in the colony that 
the Quakers governed than in any other; their 
vaunted policy of peace . . . caused the ut- 
most possible evil . . . their system was a 
direct incentive to crime and wrong-doing. No 
other colony made such futile contemptible efforts 
to deal with the Indians ; no other colony showed 
such supine selfisn helplessness. (Winning 
West I.-98.) "A class of professing non-com- 
batants is as hurtful to the real healthy growth 
of the nation as a class of fire-eaters, for a weak- 
ness or a folly is as bad for a nation as a vice, 
or worse, and in the long run a Quaker may 
be quite as undesirable a citizen as a duelist. 
No man not willing to bear arms and fight for 
his rights can give a good reason why he should 
be entitled to the privilege of living in a free 
community." (Life of Benton, page 37.) 

Taken to task later for the statement, Presi- 
dent Roosevelt in a campaign said : "Were I now 
to rewrite the sentence I should so phrase it that 



Introduction Ix 

it could not be construed as offensive to the 
Society of Friends." In a speech at Plainfield, 
N. J., in 1900, he praised the Quakers. That 
was in a campaign. He also made some modi- 
fication of his views on farmers and mechanics. 

Germans and Irish. — "The habit of importing 
indentured Irish servants as well as German 
laborers under contract, prevailed throughout the 
colonies, and the number of men thus imported 
was quite sufficient to form a considerable ele- 
ment in the population, and to add a new, al- 
though, perhaps, not a very valuable strain to 
the already mixed blood." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, page 34.) 

Bryan, Sewall, Watson, Populists, Democrats 
and other Americans who disagreed with Roose- 
velt in politics in 1896. — ''McKinley believes in 
sound finance. That is a currency based on gold 
and as good as gold. McKinley believes in a 
protective tariff. McKinley believes in the only 
way of enforcing orderly liberty, that is, in see- 
ing that the laws are enforced at any cost." 

"Mr. Watson would be a more startling, more 
attractive and more dangerous figure (than 
Sewall) for if he got the chance, he could lash 
the nation with a whip of scorpions, while Bryan 
would be contented with the torture of ordinary 
thongs." 

"Mr. Bryan, the nominee for the presidency, 
and Messrs. Sewall and Watson, the nominees 
for the vice-presidency, are almost equally de- 
voted adherents to the light-weight dollar and of 
a currency (not clearing house certificates) 
which shall not force a man to repay what he 






X Introduction 

borrowed, and shall punish the wrong-headed 
laborer who expects to be paid his wages in 
money worth something, as heavily as the busi- 
ness man or the farmer who is so unmoral as to 
wish to pay his debts." 

"Loud-mouthed predecessors of Mr. Bryan 
and his kind then thought good enough for them 
. . . Neither Mr. Bryan nor Mr. Sewall nor 
Mr. Watson has advocated a two-cent copper 
dollar. Still they are striving toward that ideal." 

"Mr. Sewall distinctly lags behind the leader 
of the spike team, Mr. Bryan, and still more dis- 
'tinctly behind his rival or running mate, or what- 
ever you may choose to call him, the Hon. 
Thomas Watson." 

"He (Mr. Sewall) is a well-to-do man. In- 
deed in many commimities he would be called 
a rich man. He is a banker, a railroad man, a 
ship-builder, and has been successful in business. 
Now if Mr. Bryan and Mr. Watson really stand 
for any principle, it is hostility to this kind of 
success. Thrift, industry and business energy, 
are qualities which are quite incompatible with 
true populistic feeling. Paying of debts, like 
the suppression of riots, is abhorrent to the 
j)opulistic mind. Such conduct strikes the popu- 
list as immoral." 

"Populism never prospers save where men 
are unprosperous, and your true populist is 
especially intolerant of business success. If a 
man is a successful business man, he at once 
calls him a plutocrat. He makes only one excep- 
tion. A miner or speculator in mines may be 



Introduction xI 

many times a millionaire, and yet remain in good 
standing in the populist party." 

"Silver is connected in his mind (the popu- 
list's) with scaling down debts, the partial re- 
pudiation of obligations, and other measures 
aimed at those odious moneyed tryants who lend 
money to those who insist upon borrowing, or 
who have put their ill-gotten gains in savings 
banks and kindred wicked institutions for the 
encouragement of the vice of thrift. . . . 
Not even the fact that the rich silver mine own- 
ers may have earned their money honestly, can 
outweigh the other fact that they champion a 
species of currency which will make most thrifty 
and honest men poorer, in the mind of the truly 
logical populist." 

There are rich scoundrels, Mr. Roosevelt says, 
who make their money dishonestly, and other 
men who make their money honestly. "But the 
populist draws no line of division between the 
classes." 

"In the minds of most thrifty, hard-working 
men who are given to thinking at all about 
public questions, the free-silver plank is very 
far from being the most rotten of the many 
rotten planks put together with such perverted 
skill by the Chicago architects. A platform 
which declared for free and unlimited rioting, 
and which has the same strenuous objection to 
the exercise of the police power by the Federal 
government that is felt in the circles presided 
over by Herr Most, Eugene V. Debs, and all the 
persons whose pictures appear in the detective 
bureaus of our great cities, cannot appeal to per- 



xli Introductiott 

sons who have gone beyond the unpolished stone 
period of civiHzation. The men who object to 
government by injunction, are as regards essen- 
tial principles of our government, in hearty sym- 
pathy with their remote skin-clad ancestors, who 
lived in caves, fought one-another with stone- 
headed axes and ate the mammoth and the woolly 
rhinoceros. They are interesting as representing 
a geological survival. . . . They are not in 
sympathy with men of good minds and of sound 
civic morality." 

*'Mushy sentimentalists and wrong-doers," 
Roosevelt says, made the Chicago platform. 
Their attack upon the Supreme Court repre- 
sents ''recurrence to the ways of thought of 
their remote barbarian ancestors." . . . 
"Populists realize that the judiciary stands be- 
tvv^een them and plunder." 

"He (Sewall) has a vein of the erratic in his 
character, otherwise he would not be in such 
company at all. But on the whole, his sym- 
pathies must be with the man who saves money, 
rather than with the man who proposes to take 
away the money that has been saved; with the 
police who arrest a violent criminal, rather than 
with the criminal. Such sympathy puts him at 
a disadvantage in the populist camp." 

In other words, Mr. Sewall, Mr. Roosevelt 
said, must have been uncomfortable. 

"Mr. Watson, whose enemies now call him a 
Georgia cracker, is in reality a far more suitable 
companion for Mr. Bryan. With Mr. Bryan, 
denunciation of the gold bug and banker is 
largely a mere form of intellectual entertainment, 



Introduction xui 

but with Mr. Watson it represents a ferocious 
conviction. ... In Watson and Tillman is 
embodied retribution on the South for having 
failed to educate the cracker, the poor white, 
which gives them strength. Mr. Watson is cer- 
tainly an awkward man for a community to de- 
velop." 

"They (the Southern populists) distrust any- 
thing they cannot understand ; and as they under- 
stand but little, this opens a wide field for dis- 
trust. Refinement and comfort they are apt to 
consider quite as objectionable as immorality. 
That a man should change his clothes in the 
evening, that he should dine at any other hour 
than noon, impresses these people as symptoms 
of depravity, instead of merely trivial. A taste 
for learning and cultivated friends and a tend- 
ency to bathe frequently cause them the deepest 
suspicion." 

Mr. Roosevelt tells how out of place Mr. 
Watson is in Georgia, where modern ideas have 
obtained some hold, and regrets that Mr. Wat- 
son could not have the more suitable South Caro- 
lina constituency which had been developed by 
Tillman. 

"Moreover, Mr. Tillman's brother has been 
frequently elected to Congress on the issue that 
he never wore an overcoat nor an undershirt, 
an issue which any populist statesman finds read- 
ily comprehensible, and which he would recog- 
nize at a glance as being strong before the 
people." 

"Altogether, Mr. Watson with his sincerity, 
his frankness, his extreme suspicion and distrust 



xfv Introduction 

of anything he cannot understand, and the feel- 
ing he encourages against all the elegancies and 
decencies of civilized life, is an exceedingly 
interesting personage. . . . Bryan, after all, 
is more or less of a sham and a compromise." 

"Now in the event of Mr. Bryan having more 
votes than Mr. McKinley, that is, in the event 
of the country showing strong bedlamite tenden- 
cies next November" . . . 'Tarrago of sin- 
ister nonsense making up the Democratic plat- 
form." 

The above complimentary notice of Mr. Bryan, 
Mr. Watson, Mr. Sewall and a considerable 
mass of American voters, is quoted from the 
Reviezv of Reviezvs for September, 1896. 

We have quoted liberally from the above as a 
model of the temperate and gentlemanly way in 
which a political controversy should be con- 
ducted. This calm and enlightening discussion 
of the issues of a campaign in one of America's 
leading reviews by a Harvard man, a historian, a 
member of the New York Four Hundred, a 
former high Federal officer who had reached the 
age of 38, is set forth as a model for the youth 
of the land to be followed on similar occasions. 
The manner of treating the subject is so frank 
and fairminded, the chivalry and fairness shown 
to rivals is something which could not be found 
in the discourse of just an ordinary American 
citizen, certainly not in a man of less education 
and refinement. High ideals shine through the 
whole discourse. After listening to the misrep- 
resentations, the innuendo, the demagogic ap- 
peals, the highly colored and narrowly prejudiced 



Introduction xv 

stujff of the ordinary cross-roads orator, this 
classic piece of Hterature is Hke a breath of 
cool salt air on a sultry day. Such scholarly 
poise, such historic love of justice. No hasty 
words these, but carefully thought out polished 
periods such as befitted the man and the 
periodical. 

Still there are those who if the above matter 
had proceeded from another source, might have 
thought it pure demagogy. To one not fully 
considering the high motives, it might be thought 
demagogy of the most outrageous sort. The 
undiscerning reader might think he saw whole- 
sale appeal to class prejudice, wholesale im- 
pugning of motives, cynical sneering at the lowly, 
poor and less fortunate classes, wholesale charges 
of iniquitous dishonesty on the part of the ma- 
jority of the American people; for the American 
people, strangely enough did show the Bed- 
lamite propensities and jMcKinley was actually 
a minority candidate, various groups of radicals 
having cast the majority of the country's vote. 

Had the notice come from a source capable of 
being doubted, there are those who would have 
applied to it the quotation taken approvingly by 
Mr. Roosevelt from Thomas H. Benton and 
applied to President Franklin Pierce: — 

^'Arguing with undaunted mendacity, moral 
callousity, and mental obliquity; exemplifying 
. . . all the modes of conveying untruths, 
direct assertion, fallacious inference and false 
innuendo." (Roosevelt's Life of Benton, page 

3450 



xvi * Introduction 

But then President Pierce was subject to 
criticism. 

Another passage from Mr. Roosevelt might 
by the undiscriminatmg be apphed to his Re- 
view of Reviews discussion : — 

"All forms of coarse and noisy slander being 
apparently considered legitimate weapons to em- 
ploy against men of the opposite party or fac- 
tion. Public men, good and bad, are assailed 
as scoundrels. The effect is two-fold: — The 
citizen learning to disbelieve any statement he 
may see in a newspaper, so that the attacks on 
evil lose their edge ; and on the other hand acquir- 
ing a deeprooted belief that all public men are 
more or less bad. The worst offense that can be 
committed against the Republic is the offense of 
the public man who betrays his trust ; but second 
only to it comes the offense of the man who tries 
to persuade others that an honest and efficient 
public man is dishonest and unworthy. Down- 
right foul abuse may be after all less dangerous 
than incessant aspersions, sneers and those half 
truths that are the meanest lies." (American 
Ideals, page 53, quoted in part from memory.) 

Our good president places on the same plane 
the "man in public life who is a demagogue, 
or who is corrupt, and the newspaper writer who 
fails to attack him because of his corruption, or 
who slanderously assails him if he be honest." 

"If there was a wholly irrational state of 
mind," says Mr. Roosevelt, "it was that in which 
the Jacksonians kept themselves. Every canvass 
on the part of Jackson was full of sound fury 
and excitement of appeals to passion, prejudice 



Introduction xvii 

and feelings, but never the reason of the hearers. 
A speech for him was usually a frantic denuncia- 
tion of whoever or whatever opposed him, 
coupled with fulsome adulation of the old hero. 
. . . The cool judgment of the country was 
apt to be against them." (Life of Benton, page 

I35-) 

History is said sometimes to repeat itself. 

Mr. Roosevelt's article in the Review of Re- 
views undoubtedly had its effect, as such a tem- 
perate, calm and patriotic article from such a 
high source must have. Strangely enough, it 
grieved Mr. Watson, and Mr. Watson wrote 
thus rudely to the distinguished author : — 

Hon. Theodore Roosevelt: It pains me to be 
misunderstood by those whose good opinion I 
respect, and upon reading your trenchant article 
in the September Review of Reviews the impulse 
was strong to write you. 

When you take your stand for honester gov- 
ernment and for better laws in New York, as 
you have so courageously done, your motives 
must be the same as mine — for you do not need 
the money your office gives you. You can under- 
stand instinctively what you feel — what your mo- 
tives are. You merely obey a law of your nature 
which puts you into mortal combat with that you 
think wrong. You fight because your own sense 
of self-respect and self -loyalty compels you to 
fight. Is not this so? 

If in Georgia and throughout the South we 
have conditions as intolerable as those that sur- 
round you in New York, can you not realize 
why I make war on them? 



xviii Introduction 

Tammany itself has grown great because the 
mistaken leaders of Southern democracy catered 
to the Kelly s and Crokers and feared to defy 
them. 

The first "roast" I ever got from a Democratic 
press of this State followed a speech I had made 
denouncing Tammany, and denouncing the craven 
leaders who obeyed Tammany. 

It is astonishing how one honest man may 
honestly misjudge another. 

My creed does not lead me to dislike the men 
who run a bank, a factory, a railroad, or a foun- 
dry. I do not hate a man for owning a bond or 
having a bank account, or having cash loaned at 
interest. 

Upon the other hand, I think each should make 
all the profit in business he fairly can; but I do 
believe that the banks should not exercise the 
sovereign power of issuing money, and I do 
believe that all special privileges granted and all 
exemptions from taxation work infinite harm. 
I do believe that the wealth of the Republic is 
practically free from Federal taxation, and that 
the burdens of government fall upon the 
shoulders of those least able to bear them. 

If you could spend an evening with me among 
my books and amid my family, I feel quite sure 
you would not again class me with those who 
make war upon "all the decencies and elegancies 
of civilized life." And if you could attend one 
of my great political meetings in Georgia and 
see the good men and the good women who 
believe in Populism, you would not continue to 



Introduction xiac 

class them with those who vote for candidates 
upon the "no undershirt" platform. 

In other words, if you understood me and 
mine, your judgment of us would be different. 

The "Cracker" of the South is simply the man 
who did not buy slaves to do his work. He 
did it all himself — like a man. Some of the best 
generals in war and magistrates in peace have 
been of the "cracker" class. As a matter of fact, 
however, my own people from my father back 
to revolutionary times, were slave-holders and 
land-owners. In the first meeting held in Geor- 
gia to express sympathy with the Boston patriots 
my great-grandfather bore a prominent part, and 
in the first State Legislature ever convened in 
Georgia, one of my ancestors was the repre- 
sei .ative of his county. 

My grandfather was wealthy and so was my 
father. My boyhood was spent In the idleness 
of a rich man's son. It was not till I was 
in my teens that misfortune overtook us, sent us 
homeless into the world, and deprived me of the 
thorough collegiate training my father intended 
for me. 

At sixteen years of age I thus had to com- 
mence life moneyless, and the weary years I 
spent among the poor, the kindness I received in 
their homes, the acquaintance which I made with 
the hardship of their lives, gave me that pro- 
found sympathy for them which I still retain — 
though I am no longer poor myself. 

Pardon the liberty I take in intruding this 
letter upon you. I have followed your work in 
New York with admiring sympathy, and have 



XX iNTkODUCTlOl^ 

frequently written of it in my paper. While 
hundreds of miles separate us, and our tasks 
and methods have been widely different, I must 
still believe that we have much in common, and 
that the ruling force which actuates both is to 
challenge wrong and to fight the battles of good 
government. 

That is the end of Thomas Watson's letter. 
We give it in full. 

There was one salvation about it. It took 
Watson out of the despised class of ''Crackers," 
or poor whites, and Mr. Roosevelt felt that he 
could be treated as a "near" gentleman, even if 
he had some queer notions. This is what Roose- 
velt says: — 

*T intended to draw a very sharp line between 
Mr. Watson and many of those associated with 
him in the same movement. ... To Mr. 
Watson's own sincerity and courage, I thought 
I paid full tribute. . . ." 

'The staunchest friends of order and decent 
government fully and cordially recognized Mr. 
Watson's honesty and good faith — men for in- 
stance like Senator Lodge of Massachusetts and 
Congressman Bellamy Storer of Ohio." (This 
was before "dear Bellamy" had joined the 
"Ananias Club.") 

This is the way in which Mr. Roosevelt drew 
the "very sharp line." 

"Mr. Watson was, in a sense born out of place 
when he was born in Georgia." He should have 
been born in South Carolina, where Tillman had 
such a following. "Moreover, Mr. Tillman's 
brother has been frequently elected to Congress 



Introduction xxi 

on the issue that he never wore an overcoat nor 
an undershirt — an issue which any popuHstic 
statesman finds readily comprehensible, and which 
he would recognize at a glance as being strong 
before the people." 

"Altogether, Mr. Watson with his sincerity, 
has frankness, his extreme suspicion and dis- 
trust of anything he cannot understand and the 
feelings he encourages against all the elegan- 
cies and decencies of life, is an exceedingly in- 
teresting personage. 

"Mr. Watson is certainly an awkward man for 
a community to develop." 

Certainly Mr. Roosevelt drew a very sharp 
line not only between Mr. Watson and those 
with whom he was associated, but also between 
Mr. Watson and the decent civilized portion of 
the community. Mr. Roosevelt's generous and 
ingenuous explanation must put him right with 
all fair-minded persons. It was made in the 
January following the elections. 

Anyway, how was a high-minded gentleman 
and cultured literary man to know that a wild- 
eyed populist actually came from decent ances- 
tors. He ought to have remained in his class, 
and if he had, such mistakes could not have oc- 
curred. Moreover, facts in cases like this are 
really not essential. They tend to hamper the 
expression of an imaginative literary man bent 
upon producing an effect, and altogether serve 
no useful purpose. 

With this explanation we pass on. Thus have 
we cleared the ground. We have fixed the lines 
of our structure. Our distinguished statesman- 



xxii Introduction 

historian has shown us how to deal with public 
men. He has shown us that the men honored 
by the American people with presidential office 
have been mostly small, mean and incompetent, 
if not corrupt. Presidential place is no criterion 
of worth, for the majority of those whom the 
people chose with devoted enthusiasm, were 
weaklings or scoundrels when their true measure 
was disclosed by our distinguished statesman- 
historian. We should not forget, as our mentor 
has clearly indicated, that it is the petty incident 
which to a really discerning biographer or his- 
torian must fix the real character of our distin- 
guished men. If they err in small things, little 
good can be found in them. 

Neither should we weakly permit ourselves to 
attribute high motives to actions which to us 
seem reprehensible. Motives in such cases are 
much more likely to be selfish, sordid, mean, un- 
worthy; — as our distinguished statesman-histor- 
ian has found in examining the records of many 
honored by their own and subsequent generations, 
and still considered great by the uninformed 
masses. 

Even whole sections of the people may be 
wrong-headed and essentially wicked. On occa- 
sion a majority of the American people may be 
foolish, uncivilized, dishonest, immoral, meanly 
envious and vindictive and bent upon despoiling 
their more intelligent, more virtuous and more 
fortunate fellows. This is what calm investiga- 
tion convinced our distinguished literary-states- 
man in 1896 to be the fact. It is what we too, no 
doubt, could have found if we faced facts with 



Introduction xxiii 

the fearless comprehension with which this good 
and great leader is endowed. 

Indeed, he has taught us most unequivocally 
that as high-motived narrators of fact, we should 
not hesitate one moment in visiting even the 
tombs of this nation's honored dead and tearing 
from them with ruthless hands the entwined 
wreaths of laurel and ivy placed there by gen- 
erations of loving and admiring souls. 

In following the example of so distinguished 
a historian in this little excursion among the 
great, we shall try not to forget that undistin- 
guished men like ourselves must walk more cir- 
cumspectly than our high ideal. We could not 
assume, like him, to speak with such infallible 
assurance of men and things. Yet his example 
must be our pillar of cloud by day and our pillar 
of fire by night to guide us on our pathway. 



ROOSEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC. 
CHAPTER I. 

"joe" MURRAY DISCOVERS A STATESMAN. 

District worker "Joe" Murray wanted revenge 
upon his quondam district leader, Barney Hess. 
Murray had been misused. The reward which 
should have been the meed of faithful service 
in caucus, primary and party conference, had 
passed to another. Murray's wrath burned red. 
He would revolt and show them who was the 
^real power in the 21st District. 

Murray needed an instrument, a vehicle, a 
triumphal car, as it were, to which he might 
chain his vanquished foes. Assemblyman of the 
Twenty-first district was the immediate stake. 
The capture of that position was to show Mur- 
rav's prowess. 

** Right here Murray had an inspiration. There 
was a name in that district to conjure with. It 
was eminently respectable in a district where 
bourgeois respectability counted for much. The 
^ name was old.^ Five generations or more had 
borne it. They were generations of smug, sleek, 
thrifty, successful business men, following an 
ancestor of homely, sturdy frugality. Though 
they had not been of great importance in civil 
life, aldermen and other minor municipal officers 
had risen from their ranks. They were men of 



2 Roosevelt and the Republic 

substance and power. Possibly a remote strain 
of Jewish blood had intensified the native Dutch 
shrewdness. But pursuit of money for money's 
sake had worn its keen edge to dullness. Fads 
of charity and public service had grasped this 
good name. It was known by its works as well 
as by its thousands. 

A new Scion of this precious stock had brolrcn 
into bloom in the ancestral garden. He had fol- 
lowed circumspectly the beaten road to the 
threshold of a career. Boyhood had been passed 
most respectably between the proper town man- 
sion and ample country home. There were ten- 
nis courts, stables and kennels, the equipment of 
the American gentleman of leisure, of the name 
graduated from trade to membership in the lesser 
gentry. Rides, hunts, games, dogs, all the 
badges of ease and respectability surrounded the 
young Scion. 

There was the preparatory school, not an 
Eton, to be sure, but a New England school 
quite as sufficient. And afterward Harvard, the 
Oxford of America, so to speak. 

Our Scion marched through Harvard in the 
congenial society of other rich men's sons. His 
was a class noted for the worldly wealth of its 
members in a school in which the standard of 
living was high for America. Our Scion's class 
was without special enthusiasm or distinction 
while in college, but its purse-strings hung 
loosely, and it was not unpopular. Ann ig them 
all Scion was noted for his liberality. His purse 
counted for more than his prowess in athletics. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 3 

He took a prominent part in financing Har- 

vardian muscle developments. 

Scion's biographer says that his hero might 
have lived in elegance at Harvard, but instead 
chose only two modest rooms in the unpretentious 
two-story-and-attic wooden residence of Mr. 
Richardson at No. 16 Winthrop street. There 
he lived alone without chums, cut off from his 
fellows in the college dormitories. On parade 
he drove a genteel horse and trap. Sometimes 
he essayed tandem driving, for Scion was some- 
thing of a swell. 

' Letters were furnished him from the Name to 
other Names in Boston, and they unlocked for 
him "Back Bay" society. Purse and Name and 
inclination carried him into the Natural History 
Club, Athletic Association, Art Club, Rifle Corps, 
OK Society, Finance Club, Hasty Pudding Club, 
Alpha Delta Phi Club, and to an editorial chair 
on the college paper. Once in, goodfellowship 
and good nature kept him there. 

It was a time of transformation at Harvard. 
Looking across the water to dear old London, 
the numerous Scions, long of purse, envied their 
brethren who went from Oxford and Cam- 
bridge to careers in politics. By sheer neglect 
since the time of the younger Adams, the wealth 
and "respectability" of America had left politics to 
^the "hoi polloi." '''Harvard had awakened to the 
opportunities of wealth and college breeding in 
politics. It mourned the days of the Adamses 
and resolved that its sons should again become 
a power in the "ruling class." 

Harvard had its Walker. Awakened by the 



4 Roosevelt and the Republic 

political revival, Harvard men saw other things 
British to admire. There was a rebirth of the 
idea of free trade, after the years of class taxa- 
tion and commercialism following the Civil war. 
Civil service reform, too, as England had it 
looked good to Harvard. It became also a fad. 
Our Scion shared all of these fads, for most of 
his real work outside of natural history was done 
in civil history and economics. Nothing import- 
ant did our Scion do. He was not the worst 
student in college, but was far from the best. 
"Honors" in scholarship flew all about him. 
They hit him but once and that a glancing blow. 

Possibly the atmosphere of great wealth which 
surrounded Scion in his college career was not 
conducive to scholarship. At all events his class 
is noted for its politicians and men of affairs. 
Robert Bacon, first lieutenant of J. P. Morgan; 
H. G. Chapin, traffic manager of the Boston and 
Albany Railway; Henry N. Collison, the prom- 
inent Boston Democrat; William A. Gaston, of 
the Metropolitan Railway of Brooklyn; R. A. 
Saltonstall of business prominence ; Arthur Hale, 
of the Pennsylvania Railway; Josiah Quincy, 
Boston's former mayor; Richard Trimble, of the 
Federal Steel Company ; Robert Winsor, success- 
ful promoter, and Charles G. Washburn, of the 
wire corporation, all were schoolmates of the 
Scion. 

With college oratory. Scion had not speaking 
acquaintance. His writings consisted of a char- 
acteristic exhortation upon athletics. This is the 
only thing he is said to have written for the col- 
lege paper. A certain "prize fight" or "glove 



Roosevelt and the Republic J 

contest," in which he came out second best, and 
a turtle episode of possible mythological char- 
acter intended to illustrate natural history lean- 
ings, marked his special distinction at college, 
if we except liberality of purse. Scion w^as wise 
in his generation. He garnered for the future. 

Bereavement which came to him in the third 
year of his college course, the loss of a distin- 
guished father, left Scion at the end of his college 
career, virtually head of his house. As if to 
emphasize his bourgeois respectability and give 
dignity to his new position, Scion married, a few 
* months after his graduation, the blue-blooded 
and accomplished daughter of an "aristocratic" 
Boston family, Alice Lee. 

Shunning the ancestral trade which had given 
Scion his thousands, his respectability, his stand- 
ing, his shrewd business sense and power of 
organization. Scion went into the law office of 
his uncle in New York City. He joined a polit- 
ical club. With some impulse, possibly from his 
Bullock ancestry of the South, he deliberately 
chose politics as a career because, as he frankly 
•^declared afterward, he "wanted to belong to the 
governing, not the governed class." To him 
they could by no means be the same. In order, 
however, that there might remain undone nothing 
which ought to be done by a man of his station 
and his fortune, he took the precaution of a trip 
to Europe, climbed the Jungfrau and the Matter- 
horn and joined the London Alpine Club, where 
the Name gave him entry. 

This was Scion when discovered by the re- 
vengeful "Joe" Murray, disgruntled district 



6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

worker of the Twenty-first district, on the eve 
of an Assembly election. A young man of Har- 
vard training; a Name with centuries of respect- 
ability upon it; avaricious dollar-lust dulled to 
satiety by generations of plenty; confronted by 
no vulgar problem of bread and butter — the prob- 
lem that has harried the ambition and even the 
soul out of many a promising career; ample 
time and money at his disposal; ancestral busi- 
ness shrewdness and organizing efficiency with 
an ambition to use it in politics rather than the 
counting room; RepubHcan traditions; residence 

rin the "silk-stocking" or "diamondback" district 
of New York City where Republicanism and the 
Name were all-powerful, these were the assets 
of Scion on the threshold of his career. In 
addition, there was district worker "Jo^" Murray 
to point out the political opportunity. 

Is it any wonder that Scion in his twenty- 
fourth year should shoot up as Theodore Roose- 
velt, assemblyman from the Twenty-first district 
of New York, by grace of circumstances and dis- 
trict worker "Joe" Murray, Mentor. There was 
some campaigning, primary and final election, 
to be sure, but in the light of conditions the re- 
sult was inevitable. "Joe" Murray had his re- 
venge. He has also come to his reward, for 

: Theodore Roosevelt does not forget his friends, 
if they persevere in meeting the demands which 
his friendship makes upon them. "Joe" Murray 
came into a comfortable berth in the immigration 
service. 

While in college, Theodore Roosevelt had been 
a thin, pale stripling of a youth. He stepped 



Roosevelt and the Republic 7 

I into the political arena, polished, lithe, alert, but 
with the nascent lines of bulldog countenance and 
character. These have deepened and broadened 
as the years have gone by. 



Roosevelt and the RepubUC 



CHAPTER II. 

ROOSEVELT THE SOLON. 

* Stress and tension ruled in politics vv^hen the 
Assembly met at Albany in 1882. New York 
was, as usual, the storm center. Tilden's elec- 
tion to the presidency, the plot, hatched in the 
New York newspaper office, and Tilden's count- 
ing out by a commission; the threatened con- 
test of blood and iron barely averted, were events 
still fresh in political memories. Stalwarts with 
Blaine's plume and Conkling's banner in the van 
had tried to ride down Garfield's halfbreeds and 
had been unhorsed. Then came the assassination 
of the victorious President by a disappointed 
office-seeker, with its fearsome fanning of fac- 
tional flames and its awakening of the country 
to the danger of spoils politics. 

Scandals which had blossomed rank in the 
rotten soil of Grant's administration still gave 
out their decaying stench. It was becoming less 
fashionable to sneer with Conkling and Blaine 
at political virtue. Political regeneration after 
a carnival of political unrighteousness seemed at 
length at hand. Never in the history of the 
nation was it more sorely needed. Each cam- 
paign reeked with scandalous accusation, and the 
pity of it was that much that was said was true. 



Roosevelt and the Republic ^ 

But young men and new ideas were coming to 
the front and old leaders going to temporary or 
permanent retirement. New York Republicans 
were split into yawning factions, ready to do 
battle to the hilt. It all had resulted in a Demo- 
cratic assembly. Alonzo B. Cornell was still 
governor. 

Under these conditions Roosevelt went to his 
task as a partisan Republican, attached in sym- 
pathy and by blood- feud to the half breeds, but 
^keeping aloof as far as he might from party fac- 
tion.* Even then, this man of seeming impulsive- 
\ ness and bulldog tenacity was passing wary. 

Democrats ruled in the assembly, but their 
slender majority of eight made their factional 
differences so serious, that it was almost a month 
after the opening of the session before Charles 
E. Patterson secured the needed majority in the 
speakership contest. Roosevelt voted with con- 
sistent partisanship for Thomas G. Alvord, the 
minority candidate who by the rules of the game 
became minority floor leader. 

Important matters came before the Assembly. 
In his message Governor Cornell ran the gamut, 
from the assassination of Garfield to the biennial 
session of the legislature. Taxation, canals, in- 
surance, militia, oleomargarine, agriculture, 
pleuro pneumonia, railway discrimination, pri- 
sons, increased murders, imprisonment for debt 
in New York City, Indians, health, immigration, 
licensing saloons, lotteries, reform in New York, 
exposition, army laws, Adirondacks, forestry, 
penal code, contested elections, bribery at the 
polls and reapportionment, were some of the in- 



•^ *. 



10 Roosevelt and the Republic 

gredients of this legislative menu. Young Roose- 
velt had full scope for his solon wisdom then and 
there. Even the railway question which was to 
loom so big in his career, confronted him at the 
very doorstep. 

Besides, he was to become acquainted with 
an entirely new set of men with slender claim 
to respectability according to the Roosevelt 
standards. It was then that the young Knicker- 
bocker gentleman met with the Bogans, the Cos- 
tellos, the O'Neills, the O'Briens, the McCarrens, 
the McClellans, the Murphys, the McDonoughs, 
the McManuses, the Mahers, the Haggerties, the 
Welches, and the whole brood of undesirable 
citizens, undesirable in name, at least, to Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, aristocrat. The assembly roll 
call sounded in sections like a Fenian roster. 

Your novice is not an important personage 
in American legislative halls. Young Roosevelt 
was no exception. With the Name to conjure 
with, with the prestige and acquaintance v/hich it 
gave him, with his unique position as the repre- 
sentative from New York of wealth and social 
standing in the assembly, he received unusual 
attention from some periodicals and newspapers. 
Roosevelt's innate modesty did not cause him to 
shrink from the publicity. Measures were placed 
in his hands by friends and political backers, to 
be presented to the Assembly. Every novice, if 
he have backers, has like opportunity. It serves 
to bring him into the limelight where he can be 
measured up and catalogued by the political 
sharps who make a business of legislation. These 
sharps sized up young Roosevelt. 



Roosevelt and the Republic ii 

His committee assignments were not bad. His 
favorite committee, and that through which he 
afterwards gained most of his notoriety as an 
assemblyman, was that on ''Affairs of Cities." 
He had no chairmanship. In this session, how- 
ever, he seems not to have been identified with 
all of the legislation relating to New York City, 
that passed through the committee and the 
Assembly. He was, however, sponsor for a 
minor measure relating to the metropolis. 

In this first year of his service, Theodore 
Roosevelt "found" himself. Like Kipling's ship, 
the stays and yards of him, the sails, the rudder 
and even the compass, were put in working order. 
» Roosevelt learned the rules of the game. He was 
schooled to debate at ease, to give and take upon 
the floor. In fact he figured in a more or less 
violent controversy over the impeachment of a 
judge, an impeachment which resulted in little 
* of importance. • That bulldog chin, and the teeth 
of him, Theodore Roosevelt learned to display 
to advantage. 

Two things this wise young man learned above 
all others. He learned the value of dramatic 
display and liberal publicity. With him melo- 
dramatic action was instinctive. Almost at once, 
he learned the way in which it impresses and 
sways the crowd the part it plays in the career 
of the ambitious public man. Very well ! 
Thereafter he would be dramatic, melo-dram- 
atic when occasion required. Neither did 
Roosevelt forget the rainbow-tinted posters an- 
nouncing the show. There must be publicity 
•—the stage announcements. Therefore the 



12 Roosevelt and the Republic 

bulldog visaged one cultivated newspapers and 
newspaper men. 

His fellows, too, learned something from him 
as well as of him. They learned that a well- 
fitting coat and a clean collar do not necessarily 
conceal a white liver or a weak heart. One does 
not need to be named Murphy or Bogan in order 
to have a convincing right hand. The fine lines 
of the royal young bulldog are even more indica- 
tive of dogged physical courage than the sullen- 
est and ugliest mongrel visage that ever glared 
into a fighting ring. 

Not all of these sapient lessons were taught 
or learned in legislative halls. It is related pic- 
turesquely, even fawningly by biographers that a 
night brawl in the neighborhood of a hotel cafe 
or barroom in Albany finally established Roose- 
velt's reputation in legislative circles for phys- 
ical courage and a mighty right arm, just as 
that reputation has been established for many 
humbler bruisers. It was a dramatic incident, 
losing nothing in the garnished telling by these 
imaginative biographers. 

Our solon, alone, unattended proceeded at 
night from the lobby of the hotel to the cafe or 
barroom. This Albany hostelry was a favorite 
resort for legislative politicians. Meanwhile a 
foul plot had been hatched by revengeful ene- 
mies. "Shorty" was to be the instrument of 
execution. Of course "Shorty's" record was red 
with prize-ring gore, and plethoric with prize- 
ring victories. Otherwise vital dramatic elements 
in the story would have been lacking. Forming 
the apex of a flying wedge "Shorty" was thrust 



Roosevelt and the Republic 13 

rudely in the path of our Solon, barring his bar- 
ward progress, and jostling his manly feelings 
as well as his slender person. With vicious 
uppercut" the ''Shorty" right shot out, that 
right which had done such prize-ring execution. 
But only to fan unsubstantial air. Solon 
smiled engagingly and with the quickness of 
light, or at least, electricity, Solon's well-direct- 
ed smash sent ''Shorty" to the hard, unsym- 
pathetic stones. 

Since biographers are blessed with different 
degrees of imaginative enthusiasm, the narrative 
at this point varies, the most entertaining if not 
the most plausible version being that Solon smote 
the human flying wedge and the human com- 
ponents thereof hip and thigh until the lobby 
floor was strewn thickly with the fallen. Then 
with long, melodramatic stride he confronted the 
conclave of scowling, conspiring, discomfitted 
enemies and flippantly, even mirthfully hurled 
contemptuous defiance full in their faces, baring 
his teeth the while in a chilling smile, without so 
much injury as a spectacle awry. Thereafter his 
wicked "enemies" respected the compelling logic 
of his argument. This was to be expected. 
John L. Sullivan's prov/ess was never illustrated 
by a more convincing tale. Scott could not tell 
a prettier story of Richard Lionheart. 

To young Roosevelt, one term in the Assembly 
meant another. This time Bogan et al. were in 
overwhelming numbers, for they marched in 
with the triumphant Cleveland over the wreck of 
the rotten Republican machine. This machine 
with characteristic unrighteousness, but with a 
brazen boldness, rather than its usual smug but 



i4 koOSEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 

shifty hypocrisy, had placed itself in opposition 
to every reform that the people demanded. 
Roosevelt's district, however, was so safe a Re- 
publican stronghold that he survived the deluge. 
With so many of the veteran Republican clans- 
men swept into the abyss, Roosevelt and his year 
of legislative experience loomed conspicuously 
in the Assembly. He was made Republican can- 
didate for the speakership with the incidental dis- 
tinction of minority floor leader. Considering 
the Democratic majority, this was a barren honor. 
At least it might have been barren for any other 
person. It gave young Roosevelt opportunity 
to develop his dramatic and fighting qualities 
and to court further publicity. 

In accomplishment for Roosevelt, this session 
was scarcely less barren than the last; still he 
made progress. Your machine politician makes 
red relentless warfare upon the real independent, 
as soon as the independent one has unequivocally 
placed himself. His sympathies go out to the 
partisan, even in the opposition. It makes little 
difference, too, how rabid the partisan. Murphy, 
Bogan et al finally catalogued Roosevelt as a 
thick-and-thin Republican partisan, and figur- 
atively speaking they took him to their political 
bosoms. His bark was annoying, but not dan- 
gerous. They learned to enjoy it on occasion. 
In an Assembly Democratic five to three, they 
permitted Roosevelt to introduce and pass a 
primary law, the primary law recommended by 
Governor Cleveland in his message and agreed 
to by the partisan politicians. It indicated that 
Roosevelt was not unpopular with the ''braves." 



Roosevelt and the Republic 15 

Biographers tell a pretty story of the young 
assemblyman standing at first aloof striving after 
high ideals, a chaste and pure isolated peak. 
Soon he felt his loneliness and impotence. The 
political Mahomet would not come to the moun- 
tain, and strange to say this "isolated peak" de- 
veloped motion and came to the political Ma- 
homet, somewhat reversing the old order of 
things. This primary law came when "isolated 
peak" had become perambulatory. 

In the great reform programme of Governor 
Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, naturally, was 
assigned no other number and took but a 
critic's part. Civil service reform was the 
piece-de-resistance of this programme. Since 
Roosevelt had been in knickerbockers, civil ser- 
vice reform had been agitated. Such men as 
Curtis, Godkin and Schurz had been urging it 
with greater and greater emphasis. The useful 
Allen Jenckes, despite his plebeian name and his 
coming out of that most unholy little common- 
wealth, Rhode Island, must be given the credit 
for getting a hearing for this reform. His work 
began in the sixties. Several presidents had re- 
ferred to it officially and otherwise. At length 
by dint of the enthusiastic support of such men 
as Curtis, and his friends outside, and the per- 
sistent efforts of Pendleton, Democrat, in Con-^ 
gress, civil service had become an issue in poli- 
tics. * Garfield's assassination by an office-seeker 
with a grievance made it a burning issue. 
Cleveland and the Democrats took it up in New 
York. 

For two years a law had been prominently 



i6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

before Congress, urged by the persistent Pendle- 
ton. In January, 1883, about the time that the 
New York Legislature convened, a national 
measure was passed. Dorman B. Eaton of New 
York, backed by Curtis and the Civil Service 
Reform Association, had whipped the Pendleton 
measure into a satisfactory piece of legislation 
and it passed a Republican congress by a non- 
partisan vote, counting its friends and its enemies 
on both sides of the chamber. 

Then it was "up to" New York Democrats to 
make good platform pledges and to pass a similar 
measure applying to New York State. Several 
bills were introduced, but the bills fathered by 
Assemblymen Miller and Brooks seem to have 
been those favored by the committee. They had 
the sanction of the New York Civil service or- 
ganization. These bills were pushed forward in 
the legislature until on May 2, 1883, a bill made 
up of some of the elements of both was offered 
by Michael C. Murphy of New York City, chair- 
man of the committee on Affairs of Cities. It 
passed the Assembly by a vote of 96 to 2. 
(There were about 48 Republicans and about 
85 Democrats in the Assembly.) Only Assem- 
blymen Avery and Small voted against the 
measure. 

Theodore Roosevelt, civil service reformer, did 
not vote, although he was present in the Assem- 
bly immediately before, if not, indeed, at the 
time the vote was taken. (Assembly Journal 
for 1883, page 1338-9.) The measure two days 
later passed the Senate unanimously. It became 
the first effective state civil service law. 



Roosevelt and the Republic i/ 

Some strange aberrations are shown by Roose- 
velt's sapient biographers in deahng with his 
early record on civil service reform. One biog- 
rapher is sure that Roosevelt originated the idea 
or at least introduced it into the country. He is 
made by this biographer, not only the author of 
the New York measure, which he did not see fit 
to support with his vote, but the national measure 
is modeled upon the New York measure! It 
seems to make no difference at all to this his- 
torian that the National measure was in Congress 
before Roosevelt left college and was on the 
statute books about the time of the convening 
of the New York legislature which passed its 
own measure five months later. 

Stratemeyer in his "American Boy's Life of 
Theodore Roosevelt" says that one of the great- 
est services done by "Theodore Roosevelt at that 
time" (when he was assemblyman) "was the 
support given by him to a civil service law for 
the state." 

Our good Indian, Francis E. Leupp, in his 
campaign life of Roosevelt shows an even more 
capricious imagination as to this portion of his 
hero's record : — 

"Mr. Roosevelt, who had been his" (Dorman 
B. Eaton's) "enthusiastic colleague in the Na- 
tional Civil Service Reform League, was author 
of the bill which passed the legislature of New 
York during Pr^i4ent Cleveland's administra- 
tion about simultaneously with the Federal act." 
(Leupp's Life of Roosevelt, page 34.) 

Shades of George William Curtis, and Roose- 
velt did not even vote for the measure; civil ser- 



i8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

vice had passed Congress months before; im- 
possible Tammany men had prepared and passed 
the Cleveland law in New York ! Even so blase 
and sophisticated a biographer as Mr. Leupp 
can on occasion perpetuate a 'Vonder story" 
when Theodore Roosevelt is the subject. Not 
nearly so exact was this as the George Wash- 
ington hatchet story which was exploded by 
Theodore Roosevelt's good friend Lodge. 
'^ In the civil service matter Theodore Roose- 
velt's action was characteristic. This wise and 
discreet young man had already learned not to 
pin his faith to new and strange measures of 
doubtful and untried popularity. The knowledge 
was kept before him throughout his subsequent 
career. Let others do the pioneer work. The 
band-wagon must be well filled and tooling along 
swimmingly, before he claims a seat. Then he 
sees to it that the most conspicuous place is 
accorded him. 

Our discreet young solon, as in after life, was 
impulsive only on the surface. Impulsiveness 
with him was a stage business, used for dra- 
matic attractiveness and advertising purposes. 
Under the skin Theodore Roosevelt was wary 
as a wood lynx. Platonic affection for free trade 
or civil service reform was all right. It tended 
to bring good fellowship at Harvard and in the 
Reform Club, but a young solon with a poli- 
tical future in the "ruling class" must be careful, 
^ime would tell how the crowd would take this 
Cleveland measure supported by Bogan et al. 
There would then be plenty of time to use it in 



Roosevelt and the Republic 19 

one's business. If it proved a fiasco, the Tam- 
many shoulders were broad and strong. Roose- 
velt's skirts were clean. 

It was not the last of civil service during 
Roosevelt's legislative career. The next New 
York assembly counted its Republicans in num- 
bers like unto the Democrats in 1883. These 
high-minded reformers imm^ediately began as- 
saults upon the Cleveland civil service law. 
Roosevelt was a prominent member. It is to 
be presumed that by this time he had sufficient 
confidence in civil service reform to consider it a 
safe thing to tie to for even the most discreet 
of young men. History does not record that the 
coy young Roosevelt aided or abetted the as- 
sault upon the Cleveland civil service law. There 
are some indications that his activity was in sup- 
port of the measure's integrity. However that 
may be, the Republican Assembly of 1S84, of 
which Roosevelt was an influential member, did 
emasculate the Cleveland civil service law, and 
it is not recorded that Roosevelt made strenu- 
ous effort to prevent that emasculation. The 
law was made a milk-and-water thing by re- 
pealing the section (Section 10) prohibiting 
political assessments upon state office-holders 
by outsiders ; by exempting soldiers and sailors 
from its operation, and by other touches deft 
and cunning. It was extended to cities as a 
compulsory measure, but in such extenuated 
form that firemen, police officers and most of 
the important classes escaped through its wide- 
open meshes. If one has not the milky way 



20 Roosevelt and the Republic 

notion of Theodore Roosevelt's importance, his 
legislative record on civil service reform, in 
view of his subsequent clamorous insistence of 
the reform's importance, v^ould surprise one, 
to 'say the least. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 21 



CHAPTER III. 

ROOSEVELT BECOMES AN INVESTIGATOR. ^ 

' According to folk lore, in the third trial lay the 
charm, and this proved true of Roosevelt. With 
a third term he rounded out his legislative career. 
Republicans were in the saddle. He found un- 
usual opportunity. New York political tactics 
were simple as a child's primer. Tammany 

' Democrats looted the city ; machine Republicans 
as regularly looted the state. Machine Republi- 
cans covered up their own iniquities by exposing 
the city wickedness of Tammany. Tammany 
Democrats defended their plunderous strongholds 
by bombarding the hypocrisy and crookedness 
of the up-state hordes. 

Grover Cleveland had entered as a disturbing 
element, for the moment putting to rout the Tam- 
many enemies up-state, but finally betraying his 
unsavory metropolitan allies to Republican am- 
bush and defeat. It was a beautiful situation. 
Here the up-state machine could use to mighty 
advantage the clamorous honesty of young As- 
semblyman Roosevelt. 

A patriotic, non-partisan organization, the 

''Union League Club of New York, whose political 
actions are always highly disinterested, — strictly 
for the public good, initiated this particular as- 



22 Roosevelt and the Republic 

sault upon Tammany. (I neglected to say that 
all tlie members of this Union League Club are 
Republican partisans in good standing who 
habitually find practically all virtue in the Republi- 
can party, as it will be remembered Historian 
Roosevelt found in its Federalist ancestor.) It 
was important that this Union League movement 
should have the appearance of disinterested re- 
form. Possibly it was Thomas Ryan's friend, 
the distinguished Elihu Root who fathered these 
resolutions and spoke to them convincingly. We 
do not now remember distinctly. At all events 
a proper member must be found in the New 
York Assembly to serve as official head for the 
assaulting column. 

Two Republican party wheel-horses, Littlejohn 
and House, took the Union League Club resolu- 
tions into the assembly and Gibbs did like service 
in the Senate. As soon as the legislative branches 
had formally declared war. House and Littlejohn 
modestly retired, remarking that they wished to 
use their time for legislative purposes at Albany. 
At first it was suggested that the direct physical 
assault (the investigation) be left to the com- 
mittee on Affairs of Cities of which Roosevelt 
was chairman. Then it was decided to appoint 
a special committee with Roosevelt still chair- 
man. His clamorous honesty would be a buckler 
and shield in the up-state campaign against Tam- 
many. Roosevelt entered into the spirit of the 
movement. 

Right here there was a little rift in the partisan 
lute, seemingly so well attuned to anti-Tammany 
battle strains. Union League, as everyone knows. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 23 

is too respectable to give anyone a general com- 
mission to smash political crockery right and 
left, even though it be Tammany crockery. Some 
of its friends, like Thomas F. Ryan and William 
C. Whitney might suffer. Union League wanted 
Hugh O. Thompson and his department of public 
works investigated. It did not care to go fur- 
ther. Take down the bars and one could not 
tell where such an investigation may lead. 

Gibbs was well in hand and consented. As- 
semblyman Roosevelt wanted a general commis- 
sion, a sort of letter of marque against Tam- 
many. Some of the Gibbs men suggested that 
the House and Senate committees should be con- 
solidated into a general committee. This would 
make it a Gibbs committee. Roosevelt's name 
would be left out. His clamorous honesty would 
have no dramatic avenue of expression. News- 
paper headlines would contain the name of Gibbs 
instead of Roosevelt. That would not do. There 
were two committees. 

Probably at no time for a century could a 
reasonably efficient inquisition have investigated 
Tammany officials of New York City (or anti- 
Tammany officials for that matter), or the up- 
state machine, without finding rottenness amply 
sufficient to warrant the investigation. Gibbs 
and Roosevelt both found Tammany rottenness. 
Roosevelt with his superior talent for stage busi- 
ness, exploited his find the more dramatically. 
He got the thing dear to ambitious young men 
of precious dramatic sense — generous newspaper 
advertising. A few bills were the result of 
Roosevelt activity, giving to certain Tammany 



24 Roosevelt and the Republic 

officers generous salaries rather than plethoric 
fees. A thing righteous and just. 

Good campaign material were these lurid dis- 
closures. They argued eloquently for a Republi- 
can mayor in New York City next time. Mayor 
Edson had some broad powers of appointment 
which would hamper his successor. To meet 
this situation, Roosevelt and his associates es- 
sayed the gentle art of ''rippering" the New York 
City administration. It was a mild "rippering," 
hardly worthy of the name, but it sufficed. Quay 
legislators in Pennsylvania bent upon smother- 
ing opposition in Pittsburg, and Cox's Ohio 
legislature with similar intentions as to Cincin- 
nati and Cleveland, followed the Roosevelt 
precedent. Besides Roosevelt got through a 
measure taking away from Aldermen the power 
of confirming mayoralty appointments. Although 
there was a possibility of getting a Republican 
mayor, there was none of getting a Republican 
board of Aldermen, so the virtuous partisans of 
the legislature did the best they could. It was 
the only way to secure control of New York 
for the Union League patriots. Of course this 
making of a little municipal czar of the mayor 
was entirely in the interest of ''good govern- 
ment." It was always easier to elect a "good" 
czar and put him in control, than to have decent 
minor officers. 

Senator Gibbs with much less fireworks and 
public clamor, pushed through two measures, 
excellent in general purport, making elective the 
places of comptroller and president of the board 
of aldermen. His good intentions were greatly 



Roosevelt and the Republic 25 

disfigured by a provision placing the power of 
removal in the hands of the governor, rather than 
in those of the mayor of New York. This was 
part of the everlasting machine programme of 
governing New York City from Albany in the 
interest of the up-state machine. 

While the astute Gibbs and the clamorous 
Roosevelt were industriously smashing Tammany 
and making capital for themselves and the up- 
state machine, a matter vital to good government 
in cities came before the legislature. It was a 
constitutional amendment embodying the enlight- 
ened principle of municipal home rule. Albany's 
interference with New York City affairs had 
probably caused ten times the corruption in the 
metropolis that otherwise would have been pos- 
sible of accomplishment by a league of all the 
powers of the world the flesh and the Tammany 
devil. It just destroyed the resisting power of 
New York City's citizenship. 

In 1882 the legislature had recognized this 
fact and had voted to submit a municipal home 
rule amendment to the State constitution. That 
amendment must pass another legislature before 
it could be submitted to the people for approval. 
It was up in this legislature where Roosevelt 
clamorously contended for pure municipal gov- 
ernment. The amendment failed. Roosevelt did 
not fight it directly or openly, for he had voted 
for it in the former legislature when it did not 
need his vote, and stultifying oneself is danger- 
ous business even for a wary young legislator of 
clamorous honesty. Friends of the bill were 
pressing it to a vote in the Assembly. Roose- 



26 Roosevelt and the Republic 

velt all at once became anxious about the meas- 
ure's legal form. He lay in ambush and sprung 
upon the hard-beset thing the bushwhacking mo- 
tion of reference to the judiciary committee. 
There it died, killed in exactly the same way as 
other legislative measures of merit, beset by legis- 
lative crooks. Roosevelt was not a legislative 
crook. Perish the thought. He merely adopted 
their methods upon this occasion in order to re- 
tain Albany control of New York City municipal 
government, as a handy asset of the up-state 
machine. 

Here was a world of enlightenment as to the 
quality of our reformer. There was opportunity 
to do the one thing worth while to meet the con- 
ditions with which he battled. Roosevelt chose 
the more dramatic route of evanescent exposure. 
As a result New York City continued to have 
government by Tammany — and hysterics. 

Temperance too was a problem with the As- 
sembly. In mellow autumn days, when prepar- 
ing the lines of battle for capturing the spoils of 
office, the up-state machine in solemn state con- 
vention had pledged the Republican party to 
submit to the voters of New York a prohibition 
constitutional amendment. A venerable member 
who was also a clergyman was possessed by the 
strange delusion that platform pledges were 
made to keep. He offered and pressed a resolu- 
tion for such an amendment. With the fervor 
and eloquence of a Peter the Hermit he con- 
tended for this thing to which his party had so 
recently pledged itself. Assemblyman Roosevelt 
of clamorous anti-Tammany honesty was de* 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2^ 

tailed to disabuse the venerable member's mind. 
Boldly he counseled the lawmakers to repudiate 
their ante-election platform pledge. To keep it 
would be disastrous to the Republican party, 
he said. Party success at that moment loomed 
bigger to him than party honor. Partisan bias 
silenced the conscience of this young man of 
high ideals. Roosevelt somewhere has said that 
an honest man will keep a platform pledge just 
as he will keep a personal pledge. But possibly 
a party platform is not so sacred as a rostrum 
statement. 

Prohibition was not the only issue involved; 
hardly the main issue. If it were Assemblyman 
Roosevelt might have had firmer grovmd to stand 
upon. His venerable clerical friend was not ask- 
ing the Assembly to pass a prohibition law. 
High-minded reformers of insistent honesty can- 
not be expected to feel bound by party pledges 
to which mere office-seekers might adhere. The 
thing asked here was merely giving the people of 
New York the opportunity to say whether or no 
they wanted prohibition. 

With Roosevelt it was a matter of principle. 
In his first book thereafter, in which there was 
an opportunity he justified himself by denounc- 
ing as witless fools legislators who would obey 
the will of their constituents against their better 
judgment. Poor ignorant voters must be kept 
in tutelage by their wise solons and given the 
best government which they are capable of re- 
ceiving. 

Friends and enemies both made capital of an 
episode in Roosevelt's legislative career. Each 



28 Roosevelt and the Republic 

has a different tale to tell. There is dearth of 
record in checking the laudatory as well as the 
condemnatory versions of this interesting tale. 
Either version is characteristic in its way. Each 
has doubtless in it something of truth. 

Tammany and up-state patriots joined hands 
in 1883 ^^ pushing through the New York legis- 
lature a bill reducing the fares on the elevated 
railways of New York from ten to five cents. 
One at that time in high place in New York 
politics and later of national fame as a Wash- 
ington lawmaker tells the story in this cynic 
fashion : — 

*Tt was a 'strike' pure and simple. The boys 
felt that they were being neglected by the public 
service interests of New YorK City and took 
this way of showing themselves alive. At that 
time a five-cent fare was probably unjust to 
the roads, and I believe the courts would have 
held such legislation a violation of the transit 
company's franchise. The roads, therefore, felt 
that Cleveland might be relied upon to kill the 
bill when it came to him, and they paid no man- 
ner of attention to the menacing 'strike.' In 
pique at this defiance the Assembly and the 
Senate both passed the measure. Roosevelt 
voted for it. 

''Sure enough, when the measure reached 
Cleveland he vetoed it and returned it with a 
smoking message to the Assembly. Newspapers 
took it up and made things uncomfortable for 
the 'striking' so Ions. It ceased to be a badge of 
honor to have voted for low fare. In fact ex- 



Roosevelt and the REPtiBLfc 2g 

planations were required to show that it was not 
a badge of graft. 

''When the measure came up for passage over 
the veto of Governor Cleveland, there was 
scurrying of the timid to cover, — with many 
contrite explanations. Roosevelt also ex- 
plained. 

" *I was busy at my desk,* declared Roose- 
velt, his thin voice rising in shrill crescendo, 
Svhen this measure came up for passage. I asked 
the gentlemen about me what it was, and they 
assured me it was a meritorious measure. I took 
their word for it and voted for the bill. Now I 
find I have been deceived. I shall place no 
further confidence whatever in these gentlemen.' 

''Roosevelt did a "flipflop," said the narrator, 
contemptuously, flipping one hand over the other 
in illustration of a somersault. "Characteris- 
tically he pleaded the baby act, placing the blame 
upon the other fellow who so wickedly seduced 
him from the straight and narrow path." As 
may be guessed, this narrator loved not Roose- 
velt. 

The other version has Roosevelt arising upon 
the floor and frankly announcing that Cleveland 
had converted him. He felt that it would be 
injustice to the roads to put a lower fare in force 
and Roosevelt could no more do an injustice 
than Washington could tell a He. He would 
support the veto of Governor Cleveland. 

As the record shows, Roosevelt voted for the 
measure when it originally passed the Assembly, 
but switched about and voted against it when 
it came up on the question of overturning 



30 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Cleveland's veto. He did explain his vote. 
Whether cynic narrative or hero tale be true, 
we must judge as we read. If the righteous 
young solon shifted the blame for his mistake 
upon other shoulders, it was not the last time 
he was to take such praiseworthy action. If he 
permitted his solicitude for the welfare of the 
corporation to crowd out his sympathy for its 
patrons, it was not to stand as an isolated peak 
in his career. Probably Roosevelt made both 
explanations, for both are characteristic. One 
thing is certain, whether or not his stand was 
courageous and manly, his motives certainly were 
not corruptr For Roosevelt has no taint of dol- 
lar-lust dishonesty. 

In the next session the New York street rail- 
ways had the Assembly better in hand for up- 
state influences governed. Lines of communi- 
cation were less obstructed. This up-state ma- 
chine was as successful a band of political free- 
booters as ever — outside of Pennsylvania — • 
looted a confiding municipality of its priceless 
public service franchises. Through this legisla- 
ture in which Roosevelt was a prominent mem- 
ber of the dominant party, was passed a railway 
consolidation act which was the progenitor of 
practically all of the subsequent legislation which 
has served to loot New York City out of its 
street railway wealth. Nowhere do we find re- 
corded determined opposition of the strenuous 
one to this nascent steal. Yet it meant millions 
to New York where Tammany peculation meant 
thousands. 

Assemblyman Roosevelt bade good-bye to the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 31 

legislative chamber a wiser man than when he 
entered, and with fewer and different ideals. 
The" faithful Riis tells of the -young man in his 
first year of service playing the role of "isolated 
peak" standing apart in cold ideal purity. He 
learned to be practical, to do things to the ever- 
lasting benefit of other legislators who dote upon 
the fleshpots of legislation's pleasant valley. 
♦ Possibly this was all true. Roosevelt un- 
doubtedly thought himself an isolated peak, for 
this distinguished man has always taken him- 
self with great seriousness. In his estimation, 
events must necessarily revolve about him. But 
if there was really an isolated peak in the New 
York legislature in 1882, it was well concealed 
in the partisan jungle. At all events Roosevelt 
quickly descended into the delectable valley of 
politics and power. 

That Roosevelt made a very marked impres- 
sion upon his fellows of the New York Assembly, 
goes without saying. His work, however, was in 
no way extraordinary. It would be difficult to 
point out anything of permanent value which he 
accomplished for the State. Undoubtedly his 
experience was of permanent value to himself. 
If Roosevelt differed from the average legislator, 
he was greater rather than less. 

No problem with which he dealt was touched 
by him at a vital spot. He blazed no pioneer trail. 
* Our young hero was cautiously rash, as well as 
clamorously aggressive, yet he traveled legisla- 
tive highways well worn by meeker men. Never 
did he delve beneath the surface. Symptoms 
were the only things he essayed to treat. No 



;^2 Roosevelt and the Republic 

probe of his struck the deep-gnawing disease. 
Rooseveh wanted to be understood and appre- 
ciated by men. *To win appreciative applause, 
one must learn to play upon prejudices as upon 
a well-thumbed lute. Roosevelt schooled him- 
self in all the popular stops and keys. From 
legislative halls Roosevelt came with serpent wis- 
dom. If there was drama in the situation 
Roosevelt could stage it as nobody else could. 
At the end of his legislative career, he was a 
connoisseur in the political show business, from 
multichrome posters to the dying declaration of 
the villain. Stage business came naturally to 
Jiim. 

Substantial accomplishment is another story. 
Roosevelt dodged civil service. Probably he dis- 
trusted the new plan. Later it became the most 
important business of his career. Upon tem- 
perance, municipal government, franchise legis- 
lation, his record was indifferent. Whether 
through failure of comprehension or mistaken 
sympathies, one is left to judge. Against the 
development of the democratic idea, his influence 
was set like a flint. This was on principle. This 
highly practical and wise young man, had in 
three short years narrowed from a man of ideals 
to a partisan politician — and the partisan poli- 
tician, whether he will or no, must place party 
above city, state or nation where their interests 
clash. But few learn to place it also above 
the interests of No. i. Roosevelt did not. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 33 



CHAPTER IV. 

ROOSEVELT MAKES CRUCIAL DECISION. 

Theodore Roosevelt soon had occasion to use 
all the political wisdom he had acquired as as- 
semblyman. He stepped from legislative work 
into national politics. Strenuous times were 
these. Stalwarts, half-breeds and independents 
were contending in deadly struggle for suprem- 
acy in the Empire state. 

Newspaper prestige had he. He had appended 
his name to a sensational report of sensational 
investigation. New York with the ardor as well 
as the fickleness of a courtesan was pushing her 
new favorite to the front. 

'Blaine like Clay of earlier days had been pur- 
suing the presidential phantom for many weary 
years. Now it seemed almost within his grasp. 
Machine Republicanism and the forces of cor- 
ruption, which in the years of iniquity following 
the Civil war had grown strong, were every- 
where working in his support. But New York 
had one of her spasms of virtue. In the presi- 
dential caucuses Blaine and his stalwart forces 
had gone down in defeat before the allied forces 
of half-breed and independent. Senator Ed- 
munds was New York's candidate. Roosevelt 
who had fought as an independent, led the dele- 



34 Roosevelt and the Republic 

gation. This delegation contained such men as 
George William Curtis (a curious commentary 
on the way politics often pushes to the front the 
untried and the immature, ignoring those of long 
and honorable service). 

In the convention Roosevelt seems to have 
fought manfully for his candidate, but Blaine 
was nominated. It was a sore blow to "inde- 
pendent" forces. Almost immediately a nasty 
scandal suppressed for years, broke upon Blaine 
with full force. Everybody open to conviction 
had the convincing, damning Blaine record be- 
fore him. This record was black enough. The 
Mulligan and Fisher letters convicted Blaine of 
corruption in office — using his position as speaker 
of the House of Representatives for private gain. 
In addition he practiced mendacity to escape the 
cliarge. 

Elaine was inimical to every enlightened do- 
mestic policy. At this time when there was 
promise of civic awakening Blaine had his face 
turned to the setting sun. He was hostile to civil 
service reform, to tariff reform, to clean politics. 
Blaine was not a Quay, but he was of the Quay 
school. Brilliancy and personal magnetism 
glossed over his rascally traits. 

Against this proved corruption was pitted 
Grover Cleveland, who up to that time had an 
official record of sterling, stalwart integrity. 
Cleveland was right on civil service reform, right 
on the tariff, and he stood for clean politics. 
Public office was to him, at that time, at least, 
a public trust, and there was not a breath of 
suspicion that this trust had ever been betrayed. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 35 

Independent Republicans deserted in shoals the 
Republican battle-standard with Blaine's be- 
smirched plumes waving at its side. George 
William Curtis and Carl Schurz were types of 
those who declared their independence. 

Theodore Roosevelt had moved with these 
men. He was a member of the Civil Service Re- 
form Association. Tariff reform was a favorite 
tenet from college days. Clamorous was he for 
honesty in the public service. When Tammany 
men held the offices, these high ideals were held 
up before gods and men. He would not be de- 
nied. One of his hobbies was clean politics. He 
knew Grover Cleveland as a man of official ef- 
ficiency, purpose, intelligence and integrity. 
Cleveland's programme at that time was prac- 
tically Roosevelt's programme in public affairs, 
if we are to judge by the declarations and asso- 
ciation of Theodore Roosevelt. 

This rash, this impulsive, this earnest young 
man, this young man of high ideals and fixed 
convictions seemed to have no choice. Indepen- 
dents were sure he must come with them. 

They were mistaken. The rash young man 
of twenty-six showed a serpent wisdom and 
caution unknown to timorous gray-beards. 
Scarcely halting or hestitating, he bade good-bye 
to his independent friends and stepped blithely 
under the besmirched banner of James G. Blaine. 
This young man who had demonstratively stood 
up in the New York Assembly and asked his 
party to repudiate its platform for its own bene- 
fit, now found party action especially binding 
upon all party men. He supported Blaine the 



36 Roosevelt and the Republic 

corruptionist, the prevaricator, the opponent of 
civil service reform, the hide-bound protectionist, 
the man of unclean political associations. Roose- 
velt could do all this but he could not lay him- 
self open to the charge of partisan irregularity. 
Convictions on official integrity, civil service re- 
form, tariff reform and the rest were sluffed 
off and discarded like a last year's garment and 
in their stead he donned the robe of mere parti- 
sanship. Roosevelt supported Blaine. As every 
partisan on occasion must do, he placed partisan 
regularity above country, above public good, 
above convictions, above clean ideals, above civic 
integrity. 

Never a Bogan, a McCarren, or a Murphy, 
or a follower of Bogan, a McCarren or a Mur- 
phy, has shown more n'arrow or hide-bound par- 
tisanship. If Croker's Indians had been as con- 
scientious in partisan regularity as Theodore 
Roosevelt has shown himself upon this occasion, 
the boss would still be gathering plums upon 
Manhattan. For the only way to get political 
crooks out of power, or to rebuke villainous 
nominations on the part of political machines is 
for intelligent men to refuse to be bound by 
iniquitous party action. Otherwise corruption 
once in the saddle of a majority party would re- 
main in power forever and a day. 

Opportunity had knocked again at the gate of 
the rising young politician. His decision to re- 
main in the partisan fold was the most moment- 
ous thus far in his political life, possibly the most 
momentous in his whole life. It means much for 
a young man of high ideals to place his civic 



Roosevelt and the Republic 37 

integrity, his civic conscience In the hands of his 
party leaders to do with it as they will. This is 
the very thing which has made of voters dumb 
driven cattle moving under the lash of self-seek- 
ing political bosses. Public privilege exploiters 
make it their stock in trade. It has laid a paralyz- 
ing hand upon the Republic from its inception. 
Blind partisanship has been responsible for at least 
nine-tenths of the political corruption in Ameri- 
can history. Should every voter adhere to it, 
it would mean the speedy death of the Republic. 
In Pennsylvania only has this ideal held sway 
with practical uniformity for a considerable 
period, and we all know Pennsylvania. When 
all men reputed to be honest, honorable, patriotic 
and intelligent in politics, refuse to rebuke their 
recalcitrant party by temporarily withdrawing 
support, we may ring the deathknell of self-gov- 
ernment. Open revolt in such circumstances is 
the only bond of party decency. It is not a 
question of abandoning the party, merely one of 
castigating it into cleanliness. 

Roosevelt, then showed rare courage, rare as 
P'oraker ever displayed, in taking the merely par- 
tisan course. In his later writings he says there 
are occasions upon which men must break with 
their party. He has been fortunate in never 
finding an occasion on which he found it neces- 
sary to do so. Roosevelt at least kept his parti- 
san record clear, his influence as a partisan unim- 
paired for future use. Probably it was better 
to do so in view of an overmastering ambition to 
belong to the "governing class." 



38 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER V. 

ROOSEVELT ANSWERS A CALL TO THE WILDS. 

Coincident with Blaine's defeat was the retire- 
ment of Theodore Roosevelt for a time from 
politics. Atavistic longings for the excitement 
of the primordial hunter thrilled him. He had 
met personal bereavement in the deaths of his 
wife and mother. A sullen wish to get away 
from men possessed him. It must be quenched 
in the red blood of living things. His biog- 
rapher says that Roosevelt must have been born 
with the instincts of the hunter. V/hen he was 
given his first gun at ten, all else was forgotten 
for a time while child Roosevelt indulged the 
primordial lust to kill. Now again, Roosevelt 
sought the wilds. Violent, uncouth men and 
strange beasts were selected for companions. 
Like a Saxon forest baron Roosevelt drew rough 
retainers about him and spent his days in tending 
herds and in slaughter of the wild. 

Up to this time Roosevelt had preserved the 
slenderness of youth. Now he showed remark- 
able increase in girth. The filling out which 
comes to most healthy men, especially those who 
pass a spare and angular youth, now came upon 
Roosevelt. He became possessed of rough 
physical strength. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 39 

With his biographers this was due to Roose- 
velt virtue. It was an indication of what will- 
power could do. He had evaded the Biblical 
rule and added cubits (in circumference) to his 
stature. To the faithful Riis, whose pathetic 
canine loyalty unhorses his judgment whenever 
Roosevelt is the theme, the thickening of Roose- 
velt's form was a miracle due to Roosevelt's 
wonderful will. All others who think it over, 
will find that what happened here happens with 
the great majority of the healthy sons of women 
between their twenty-second and twenty-eighth 
years. 

To Roosevelt on his crude ranch in the barren 
Dakotas came the well-recognized partisan call. 
A municipal election was in progress in the 
Knickerbocker city. It was not Tammany this 
time. A great popular leader, beloved of the 
toiling masses, was beginning a campaign which 
menaced Wall street privileges and Wall street 
millions. Tammany leaders, those mercenaries 
of corrupt privilege, took the alarm. They nom- 
inated a gentleman of eminent respectability to 
uphold the traditions of Democracy — and Tweed. 
There was still danger. The Tammany rank 
and file would not listen to discipline. Hosts of 
young men were restive. It was difficult to say 
how they would vote. At this crisis, the up- 
state machine commanded its useful son. He 
came. Not that he had any message to give or 
programme of city government to carry out. 
But Roosevelt was a young "reformer." Just 
the man to keep in the fold young enthusiasts 
whose ideas might lead them into the George 



40 RoOSEVfiLT AND THE RePUBLIC 

ranks, even to a war on privilege. Roosevelt 
heeded the call. He went through a campaign 
with his usual aggressive assurance. Young en- 
thusiastic voters were divided. Tammany's 
highly respectable representative was elected with 
the aid of the young "reformer." George went 
down to defeat. Privilege was safe. Roosevelt 
came out a rather poor third in the voting, a 
thing not especially flattering to the regular 
nominee of one of the two great parties. Roose- 
velt was a good soldier and did not complain. 
He was proud in the consciousness that he had 
served his party and saved New York City to the 
respectable element in government. Privilege, 
too, had won a victory. Mr. Ivins and his com- 
mission have recently been furnishing facts as 
to how valuable such a victory was. 

Roosevelt went back to his cow-punchers and 
his hunting. Here he killed the forest popula- 
tion and wrote epics of the killing. He became 

/part of the primitive lawless life of the frontier. 

^ Thus was he to know intimately the two extremes 
of life — that of the New York Four Hundred 
and that of the primordial life of the frontier 
wilderness. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 41 



CHAPTER VI. 

ROOSEVELT BECOMES CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER. 

While Roosevelt punched cows and killed bears 
in the far west he kept an anxious eye upon poli- 
tics in the East. Political club membership was 
kept up. He had still the ambition to belong to 
the governing class. 

Activity in the Harrison-Cleveland struggle in 
1888 brought its reward in Roosevelt's appoint- 
ment to membership in the Civil Service Com- 
mission. He was to serve v/ith Charles Lyman 
and Hugh Thompson, the former a veteran in 
the work. 

At this time the **merit" system in civil ser- 
vice had been tried out and its popularity proved 
beyond question. It was no raw experiment. 
Great respectability had come to it. It was en- 
tirely safe for the most cautiously rash young 
politician. There were then none of the dangers 
and problems that beset its pioneer path. No 
other reform had been so quickly accepted by the 
respectable elements. Few were less vital in 
principle to democracy. Not that the "merit" 
system was not a great improvement over the 
spoils system. As applied thus far, both have 
evil elements. The "merit" system, as at present 
administered, far the fewer. 



42 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Theretofore the commission had busied itself 
with organizing the new bureau and pushing for- 
ward its claims as rapidly as discretion would sug- 
gest. Much had been accomplished. At the end 
of the Arthur administration there were about 
14,500 places in the classified service out of a 
total of 125,000 places. At that time the classi- 
fication applied to little more than the depart- 
ments in Washington. The great postal service 
and the customs service were touched but lightly. 
Internal revenue, justice and the rest, not at all. 

By executive orders during his first term, 
President Cleveland had added 7,000 positions to 
the classified service. Natural growth had added 
about 5,000 more. When President Cleveland 
left office in 1889 there were in the classified ser- 
vice approximately 28,000 employees, an increase 
in the four years of nearly one hundred per cent. 
This aggregate of 28,000 represented practically 
five years of patient and unostentatious work on 
the part of the commission in the application of 
the law. In this period the commission was 
headed for the most part by Dorman B. Eaton. 
Eaton had done much to get the civil service 
law through Congress. The organization and 
progress of the commission during this formative 
period was due largely to him. 

With the support of a president, the most 
consistent civil service reformer who has thus 
far occupied the White House, the commission 
had succeeded in getting about eighteen per cent, 
in numbers of the executive civil service classi- 
fied. Considering the importance of the posi- 
tions, the proportion was much greater. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 43 

Roosevelt's entrance into the commission was 
the beginning of a new regime. Then for the 
first time the reports of the commission became 
pugnaciously controversial. Enemies were ''lam- 
basted" and the work of the commission ex- 
ploited. What before had been done quietly and 
meekly was now done clamorously and ostenta- 
tiously. Roosevelt's dramatic instinct shines 
through the dry pages of the reports. Every- 
thing becomes superlative. Dramatic situations 
set in stage business are exploited before an ad- 
miring public. As would the editor of a sen- 
sational journal bent on street sales, the com- 
missioners pick out some one stirring incident 
and write their reports around it. 

This sort of tactics called the attention of the 
public to the civil service commissioners. When 
they looked the thunderous young Roosevelt was 
always at the center of the stage. He courted 
newspaper controversies with cabinet officers, 
Congressmen and Senators. It was not his fault 
that they were prominent and that controversies 
with them brought Roosevelt prominently into 
public notice. Neither was it his misfortune, 
thus to mount into public view on the shoulders 
of conspicuous public characters. Roosevelt 
soon had a reputation as a wonderful "civil ser- 
vice reformer." 

As for the real work of the commission, it 
went on much as usual. Progress during the 
five years of Roosevelt's service as a commission 
member was approximately the same as for the 
previous five years. But the road was naturally 



44 Roosevelt and the Republic 

much smoother. Eaton and his pioneers had 
cleared the way. 

Up to this time poHticians had pressed each 
administration to play football with the civil ser- 
vice law. President Arthur had not learned how 
and President Cleveland, for the most part, re- 
sisted the solicitations. But the gang was too 
strong for Harrison, backed as he was by the 
insistent and pugnacious Roosevelt. Progress 
including new places had been painfully slow 
until President Harrison had been defeated for 
re-election. His followers, up to that time, 
seemed to need all the patronage that they could 
scrape together. But January 5, 1893, less than 
two months before President Harrison yielded 
the place to President Cleveland, by executive 
order he placed all the free-delivery post offices 
under the classified service. Theretofore only 
post offices with more than fifty employees had 
been classified. By this skillful coup of the 
eleventh hour 7,660 places had been added to the 
classified list. At the same time 7,660 Republi- 
cans who had been happy partakers of the spoils 
of office, were placed under the protection of 
civil service rules in anticipation of the assaults 
of Cleveland's hungry followers. Almost to a 
man these spoilsmen thus protected were Harri- 
son party, partisans. 

History repeated itself. The order of January 
5, 1893, was an echo of the Adams midnight 
judges. A more shabby trick would be difficult 
to think of, or a more hypocritical one, seeing 
that it was done in the name of civil service 
reform. There were murmurings and ques- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 45 

tioning of motives. Harrison and his friends 
of the Civil Service Commission were held up 
to scorn. Circumstances looked bad. Still the 
thing was done for all time, and however shab- 
by the trick it would be difficult to say at this 
time that it was not of benefit to the country. 

By driblets, before this eleventh-hour coup, 
Harrison had added about 350 other places, so 
that the end of his administration found about 
8,000 places added by executive order and 7,000 
new places by natural growth. Without the 
''midnight" order, Harrison's administration 
would have meant very little indeed to civil ser- 
vice, even though Roosevelt had been a commis- 
sioner a large portion of the time. There were 
now approximately 43,000 places in the classified 
service out of a total of 170,000. The number 
had increased from eighteen per cent, of the 
whole to twenty-five per cent, of the whole. 

As soon as Cleveland took up the work of his 
second term, he resumed the extension of the 
classified service. In 1894 he extended the 
classification to assistant teachers in the Indian 
schools, to meat inspectors and to messengers in 
the departments. Also watchmen. Both these 
positions were open doors through which spoils 
appointees got into the classified service. Smaller 
customs houses and steamship mail clerks were 
also included. Railway mail service was classi- 
fied. Many excepted places in the postal ser- 
vice came under the classification. Cleveland 
closed the back door entrance to classified pro- 
tection by providing that persons appointed to 
jion-classified places could not be transferred to 



46 Roosevelt and the Republic 

those which were classified. Roosevelt in one 
of his reports slyly belittles this work of Cleve- 
land. No political opponent, somehow, has been 
able to do much capable of meeting the approval 
of Mr. Roosevelt. 

Roosevelt resigned May 5, 1895, to become 
police commissioner in New York City. No halt 
was made in the extension of the classified ser- 
vice. Treasury department, pension agencies, 
Indian affairs were successively brought under 
the commission. Government printery followed. 
By the Cleveland order of May 6, 1896, prac- 
tically all the places in the executive civil service 
coming within the scope of the law of 1883 were 
brought under the commission. It was one of 
the most important orders in the history of the 
civil service. Only fourth class postmasters and 
a few thousand other employees were excluded 
from the classified list. In an executive civil list 
of 178,717 there were 87,101 classified places. 
Outside of the classified list, but capable of 
classification, there were 72,371 places of which 
66,725 were fourth class postmasters. Approx- 
imately fifty per cent, of the places were classi- 
fied, a gain of twenty-five per cent, since Har- 
rison's exit. Cleveland was also accused of get- 
ting his partisans under cover of the classified 
service before giving up his official ghost. The 
charge has little force. His sweeping order was 
nearly a year before the end of his term, and his 
work in the same direction had been so consistent 
theretofore, that his motive could hardly be ques- 
tioned. For practical, consistent work, Cleve- 
land stands head and shoulders above every 



Roosevelt and the Republic 47 

other presidential civil service reformer. While 
his work was done quietly and as a matter of 
course it was thorough, greatly strengthening the 
weak places and striking down evasion and fraud. 
Without adding to or subtracting therefrom, 
we have given Theodore Roosevelt's record as 
civil service commissioner. He was an efficient 
officer, despite his bluster and his grandstand 
posing. Aside from the clamor of it, his record 
is in no sense extraordinary. Eaton, Lyman or 
Proctor, although figuring far less in the news- 
papers could have shown as great accomplish- 
ment. If we consider the greater difficulty of 
pioneer work either of these men undoubtedly 
did more for civil service than Theodore Roose- 
velt. Had Roosevelt never been connected with 
the Civil Service Commission it is more than 
probable that the cause would still be just as far 
■tdvanced. Effective fighting was done by his 
predecessors and his overshadowing chief. His 
work in the commission was that of a faithful, 
but noisy and spectacular though very ordinary 
■ )fficer, nothing more. But his personality was 
never ordinary. He gave a melodramatic 
glamour to everything he touched. Civil service 
was no exception. We shall meet him again in 
the presidency and see what he Has accomplished 
there for this reform. 



48 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER VII. 

enters storm center in new YORK. 

Theodore Roosevelt finally grew weary of 
tennis and civil service reform. Literary activity 
palled upon him. His commissionership in 
Washington and the opportunities it gave "the 
bumptious young man" cynically "forgiven" by 
the New York Sun for "knowing it all," had 
made Roosevelt a national figure. His enemies 
thought him a national joke. 

When in office but three months he was telling 
the country through periodicals and newspapers 
all about the civil service. Nobody else knew 
quite so well or could tell the story so impress- 
ively. Modesty prevented him from claiming 
responsibility for the whole civil service move- 
ment. But it remained for him to give it real 
vitality. Such was the spirit, if not the tenor of 
his fecund elucidations. 

Things were happening in New York. Roose- 
velt looked thither, yearning for a part in the 
excitement. He wanted to be at the storm center, 
he said. Parkhurst, the zealot, had blazed the 
way for Lexow, a small county tool of the up- 
state machine. Of course the machine took ad- 
vantage of the situation, and got the credit for 
the awakening, as Lexow got the credit for the 
work really done by Recorder Goff. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 49 

Good people of New York were aroused. 
Tammany, the unspeakable, had been wading 
deeper than usual in its welter of corruption. It 
had been preying, vampire-like, upon the powers 
that prey, a parasite upon parasites. Tammany 
demands grew exorbitant. It wanted too much 
of the plunder. Respectable big "interests" pro- 
tested. Small grafters suffered in silence and 
stored up wrath for the days to come. This 
made an opportunity. Piatt was there to grasp 
it, for at that time Piatt was in the heyday of his 
power. His Sunday levees at the Fifth Avenue 
Hotel had become the talk of the nation. Piatt 
was paving the way for the golden age of Gov- 
ernor Black and President McKinley. 

At almost any time the citizens of New York 
City have just cause to flagellate Tammany, just 
as at any time New York state would be justified 
in crucifying, figuratively speaking, the up-state 
machine. Let a crusader arise, a Peter the Her- 
mit, like unto Parkhurst, honest but narrow, and 
with a real message, and he can find material for 
a popular uprising. While Parkhurst confined 
himself to police graft and kindred evils, the in- 
terests were at his elbow encouraging on his 
mission, which was to humble the grasping avar- 
ice of Tammany pride. Politicians must have 
their lesson. Otherwise nothing may be left for 
the big "interests." An assault upon disrepu- 
table powers that prey may, however, in the dust 
of its conflict cover the taking over of king's ran- 
soms by highly respectable "interests." 

Mayor Strong rode into office upon such a 
swell of circumstances. Parkhurst's flaming 



50 Roosevelt and the Republic 

sword had put to flight the obvious powers of 
darkness. He and his friend Lawyer Moss were 
a pair to conjure with. Lexow got his com- 
mission for legislation from the same power as 
Strong. Public utility exploiters in partnership 
with the up-state machine were not to go unre- 
warded. Piatt followers, lean from the stony 
hills up-state fed fat upon the fleshpots of the 
metropolis. 

Harper's Weekly and the Nation saw no good 
in the Lexow Police measure. To them the 
cloven foot of Piatt was clearly visible. He was 
trying to make New York police precincts part 
of his browsing ground. But the mayor was the 
right man. Business man of reputation, re- 
spectable, practical and complaisant, if he should 
approve these Piatt measures even iniquity would 
be given tone. 

Police rottenness had been the issue. Now 
we must have a correct police board. This was 
the one thing additional to make the setting per- 
fect. On all sides it was conceded that Tam- 
many's man Martin must go. Mayor Strong 
selected A. D. Andrews, an Elihu Root Democrat. 
Or was it William C. Whitney who stood 
sponsor? Murray and Kirwin who did yoeman 
service in defeating Tammany were to remain 
on the commission. Piatt forces, at least, so 
understood. Strong, backed by the Union 
League Club and the Committee of Seventy, was 
not so anxious to carry out ante-election pledges, 
especially since they seem to have been am- 
biguous pledges. Through Andrews, the Demo- 
crat, he started a figlit upon Murray and Kirwin 



Roosevelt and the Republic 51 

as obstructionists, and incontinently bade them 
go. It looked squally for Piatt. 

Mayor Strong floundered around a bit, offer- 
ing a place on the regenerated commission to 
Henry Campbell and then to former Sheriff 
O'Brien. Both declined. By a happy thought, 
or a timely suggestion Strong hit upon Civil Ser- 
vice Commissioner Roosevelt. Everybody re- 
joiced, Roosevelt among the rest. He was to be 
in the "storm center." Now they would have real 
police reform. 

On the other hand Roosevelt was entirely satis- 
factory to the ''interests." Piatt, Lauterbach, 
and their followers were standing in their own 
light, as mere politicians are likely to do. Pos- 
sibly they were putting up a show of fight in 
order to get in on the "melon-cuttings" of the 
"interests," and by the capture of two places, 
through Frederick Dent Grant and A. D. Parker, 
they put themselves in the succession. At least 
they were collateral heirs. 

( Roosevelt has the knack of doing things, and 
doing them noisily, clamorously. While he is in 
the neighborhood the public can no more look 
the other way than the small boy can turn his 
head away from a circus parade followed by a | 
steam calliope. Roosevelt with pen in hand and i 
his doors wide open to the interviewers took up 
his work as president of the police board. 

For months New York talked Roosevelt and 
police. High financiers rejoiced. A public en- 
gaged in such harmless pastime is not over 
watchful of more important things. Roosevelt 
and Parkhurst, both resonantly honest, cast out 



52 Roosevelt and the Republic 

real Tammany devils whose numbers were legion, 
while the "interests," silently, deftly, swiftly cap- 
tured New York public privileges richer than 
Golconda. 

Had Roosevelt's ancestors not reached business 
satiety, Theodore Roosevelt would have been one 
of the successful business men of to-day, instead 
of the most successful politician. Eminently he 
^ has the executive talent. This with an utter lack 
of idealism, the hard-headed practicality of the 
counting room, the pushing energy of the pro- 
moter and an opportunist attitude toward moral 
questions, made Roosevelt an excellent police 
head. His were the talents which have made 
many an American wealthy. 

Police administration consists in "doing 
things." Police should know no principles but 
those of the law. They should have no policies 
but law enforcement, sympathetic, human and in- 
telligent, to be sure, but rigid and uncompromis- 
ing. Roosevelt met the conditions. Lack of 
idealism might leave his policies narrow and soul- 
less. He might display little strength in the 
legislative field. Great questions concerning 
great peoples might be too much for him. But 
he could take a body of men and police a city. 
Roosevelt knew his men reasonably well. Energy 
and the power of concentration brought his per- 
sonality to bear with maximum weight upon 
those in his control. Roosevelt is an excellent 
censor of commonplace morality. He appre- 
ciates order and respectability. Order and re- 
spectability are the things police are designed to 
enforce. Roosevelt was in his element. He 



Roosevelt and the Republic 53 

made a good police department head, one of the 
best that New York has produced. 

It is said that he had congressional ambitions 
at that time and wanted to get himself promin- 
ently before the people. If so he succeeded. At 
all events in the light of the good which he ac- 
complishd as a police chief we can forgive his 
clamorous methods. Big "interests" also for- 
gave them. 

Corruption was rife in the police force, but it 
seems not to have penetrated the rank and file. 
Change of policy and the removal of a few men 
in high places, put the force upon a footing of 
reasonable efficiency. The disposition of the 
commission as a whole was to make an efficient 
police force. Harper s Weekly at the time, in a 
thoroughly friendly and laudatory article upon 
Roosevelt's administration of the New York 
police gave the whole commission credit for the 
work that was being done. 

To write an epic upon police administration 
is not an easy task, yet that is the task some of 
Roosevelt's biographers have set themselves. 

With access to the columns of leading periodi- 
cals, Commissioner Roosevelt did not permit his 
light to be hidden, nor the sounds of his ex- 
ploits to die away. Critics then and thereafter 
attacked the police administration of Commis- 
sioner Roosevelt. They ridiculed the Oriental 
midnight visitations, setting it down as mere 
stage business. Melo-dramatic exploitation, they 
said, left unguarded the by-ways of serious 
crime. It is a controversy into which we do 
not care to enter. 



54 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Certain it was that the cleansing of the police 
had been made easy by Parkhurst and Lawyer 
Moss. Roosevelt and his associates had police 
resources far beyond their predecessors. They 
appointed about 1,700 new men to the force, un- 
hampered by civil service rules. 

One might find good grounds for legitimate 
criticism. An anonymous ''roast" upon Chief 
Byrnes was given out by the board while the 
chief was still in office, without taking the 
trouble to identify the writer or sift the charges. 
This extraordinary method of dealing with sub- 
ordinates in office has never been satisfactorily 
explained. Certainly it did not make for disci- 
pline. The victim, at least, could not see wherein 
it was just or manly. 

When law runs counter to the wishes of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, something is likely to happen to 
the law. Some of the New York police statutes 
were stretched almost to the breaking point, if, 
indeed they were not actually fractured. One 
required that men be given a trial before being 
removed from their positions. Action of the 
police commissioners in this matter were review- 
able by the courts. Roosevelt and his associates 
boasted that they had found a way to beat the 
law. At least 100 men walked the plank with- 
out trial. Considering their own highminded- 
ness, there was really no need of law to protect 
underlings. Some men could not act unfairly if 
they tried, for whatever they might do would 
not be unfair. Theodore Roosevelt is one of 
the few men who can claim this high privilege. 

Other civil service principles were taken liber- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 55 

ties with too by the police commissioners. When 
as a member of the New York legislature, Roose- 
velt "investigated" the police of New York City, 
he found a very wicked state of affairs in the 
commissioners arbitrarily designating the men 
who should be candidates for examination and ap- 
pointment. Police Commissioner Roosevelt 
found it convenient, as well as highly proper 
that men privileged to take examinations for pro- 
motion should be designated thus arbitrarily by 
the commissioners. Commissioners should have 
the privilege of saying who should get an op- 
portunity to rise, and who should be condemned 
to plod onward in the ranks. Commissioner 
McAdoo of later years criticizes this sort of 
system sharply. Participated in by a commis- 
sioner capable of doing wrong, carping critics 
might see in it the cloven foot of spoils politics, 
even log-rolling. But of course Theodore 
Roosevelt could not be suspected of anything 
like that. He could toy with temptation but 
never fall. This gave him a new opportunity 
"to come out strong." 

After Roosevelt had his sort of men in office 
he made an honest effort to give them protection 
on civil service principles. Like the trick of 
President Harrison's administration with the 
postal employees, it finally conferred a benefit on 
the force. Unlike the Harrison coup, Roosevelt 
had not filled the places with time-servers. His 
appointees averaged high. 

Good intentions did not save Roosevelt. 
Trouble thickened about him. In trying to hit 
Tammany, Roosevelt went too far in his excise 



56 Roosevelt and the Republic 

crusade. He offended son:, good New York 
people with his all too puritanical Sunday. His 
stage business, always ridiculously vulnerable 
was exploited in opposition newspapers until in a 
large section of the popular mind, Roosevelt be- 
came something of a joke. American sense of 
humor refused to take seriously his gasconade. 

Piatt had things about where he wanted them. 
Roosevelt's distracting activity became annoying 
rather than helpful. He took himself and his 
work so seriously as to become obstreperous. 
Then Piatt and Tammany put their heads to- 
gether to tame the obstreperous one. Commis- 
sioners Parker and Grant began sticking official 
pins in the president. Everything- Roosevelt 
stood for they opposed. Popular support in an 
important sense had not yet come to Roosevelt. 
Antagonism soon became acute friction. Fight- 
ing Theodore Roosevelt had all the fight he 
wanted right in his own household. The biparti- 
san board divided athwart party lines, Roosevelt 
and Andrews standing upon one side and Parker 
and Grant on the other. 

Bickerings became public and discipline in the 
police force suffered. Chief Conlin said so. He 
blamed the commissioners for the condition. 
This was rank insubordination. When brought 
to task, Conlin refused to explain or apologize. 
Parker and Grant prevented punishment. Roose- 
velt was driven into a corner and baited until the 
strenuous fighting man threw up his hands. In- 
stead of holding on like a thoroughbred and 
fighting it out to the end, Roosevelt quit — like a 
fake prize-fighter, his enemies said. His friend 



Roosevelt and the Republic 57 

Lodg-e had found an opening for him in the Navy 
Department. Roosevelt proceeded thither. 

We are not prepared to say that Roosevelt was 
unwise in his action. Probably he realized that 
he had lost his grip, and further struggle would 
have meant defeat and humiliation. He might 
have known what outsiders could not know, that 
in the police commissionership of New York 
under conditions as they then were, there was 
failure ahead. In that case it was wise to move 
on and avoid the unpleasant denouement. 

Lawyer Moss who with Parkhurst paved the 
way for Roosevelt, succeeded in his place, mak- 
ing a much quieter, but hardly less efficient com- 
missioner. Really "the jig was almost up." 
New York tired of Piatt and the up-state ma- 
chine. The spell of hysterics had run its course. 
Union League Club disinterestedness was no 
longer accepted without question. Even there 
were axes to grind in the Committee of Seventy. 
New York had made a spasmodic effort for in- 
dependence and failed. It flew for deliverance 
to the arms of Tammany and Van Wyck, as lesser 
evils. In making this move New York did not 
escape the "up-state" machine, nor Piatt, nor the 
Union League Club, nor the "interests." But it 
found the receptive arms of Tammany — the same 
old Tammany that it had spurned. 

Thus did the police commissionership of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt end rather unsatisfactorily. But 
it supplied New York a new sensation, humored 
its fit of hysterics, and improved somewhat the 
New York police force. No indelible impress 
was left by Roosevelt upon the service, for after 



58 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Roosevelt came Tim Sullivan, William Devery 
and Jerome. More remarkable than all this how- 
ever, was Roosevelt's retreat under fire. This 
would have been galling to such a born fighter 
less thoroughly protected by an embracing armor 
of self-satisfaction. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 59 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BECOMES HEAD OF NAVY DEPARTMENT. 

From the gridiron heat of the Police Commis- 
sioner seat, Roosevelt went to the calm serenity 
of Washington tennis, literature and naval af- 
fairs. Things were happening in Washington. 
That, too, promised to become a storm center in 
the near future. Good people who had saved 
the country from ''dishonest dollars," ''free riot," 
"no undershirts" and a score of other dangerous 
or untidy things, now felt that they should have 
their reward. Senator Hanna of Ohio was the 
chief saint among these disinterested patriots. 
President McKinley's piety was so all-embracing 
as to give a glamour to all his surroundings, 
transforming questionable acts into those of the 
very greatest merit. Hanna and the President 
had saintliness sufficient for everybody. Their 
followers were hungry. Well doing alone could 
not sustain them. Richly did they reap their 
reward. 

"Honesty" seems to have been entirely ex- 
hausted in the campaign. As soon as President 
McKinley was inaugurated, the black flag of 
piracy was raised on every industrial sea. A 
carnival of graft, public and private, swept over 
the country from Maine to California and from 



60 RoOSEVELt And the REPtTBLlC 

Canada to Mexico. Greedily were the eyes of 
its votaries set upon rich pickings in other lands. 
The spasm of paper morality and lip virtue so 
evident during the most ingeniously insincere and 
shamelessly mendacious national campaign in our 
history was to counterbalance all the seething in- 
iquity of the years to come. 

When Roosevelt went into the Navy Depart- 
ment, darkening on the horizon was that sullen 
cloud which later burst into the flash and thunder 
of the war with Spain. There was unrest in the 
Orient. China, the mighty sleeping giant of 
Asia was stretching his limbs in a strife-beset 
awakening. Audible rumblings of the storm to 
come were rolling over the African veldt. Roose- 
velt heard and saw. He felt that he must get 
into the turmoil. 

Roosevelt was an "authority" upon naval mat- 
ters even before he entered the department. Like 
"Book-taught Bilkins" he was an authority upon 
most subjects under the sun. This was a great 
advantage to Roosevelt. One of his biographers 
tells how fortunate it was for the country that 
such a man was at the HEAD of the Navy De- 
partment at such a time. Peace-loving Mr. Long 
of Massachusetts who had the title of Naval 
secretary, did not seem to count at all. Roose- 
velt seems to have taken the same view. His 
seat was scarcely warm in his new place when 
he was enunciating naval policies and telling the 
public about them in sapient periodical communi- 
cations. His facile pen was still with him. Also 
his power of granting interviews or inspiring 



Roosevelt and the Republic 6i 

news items in which Assistant Secretary Roose- 
velt's name appeared. 

For a close corporation among the American 
"governing class" we have nothing else approach- 
ing the navy. It is almost as exclusive as the 
British peerage and like that peerage, manages 
to digest some especially verdant morsels. The 
British peerage shows sour stomach for a gen- 
eration or two after swallowing a brewer with 
his brewery, or a Hebrew banker with his bank, 
but the greenest Yankee in America can be pol- 
ished naval gentleman in six years handling. Or 
if he cannot, he can be cast out. We do not wish 
to reflect upon the material in the navy. It has 
some of the best men in the nation. They are 
really wonderful men if they have any American- 
ism left after a lifetime in the service. The 
naval ideal does not harmonize with democratic 
institutions. 

But the training does not lead to efifeminacy. 
The well-groomed pedigreed bull-dog will fight 
as well as the gutter cur of the same breed. So- 
ciety, however, counts for much in the navy. 
Such being the case one cannot wonder at the 
persistent recommendation for big-fighting ships 
which can be made into floating palaces for these 
fighting gentlemen, of elegance and leisure. 
Hence also the navy personnel bill. But we 
anticipate. 

Roosevelt had social standing before he went 
to Washington. He could do something for the 
navy social circle and it could do something for 
him. They got along swimmingly together. He 
was a man after the navy's own heart. 



62 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Then the campaign began. Naval officers had 
a plan all built, varnished and polished to a 
piano finish. No naval officer wanted to father 
it. Congress can be pretty nasty to navy and 
army meddlers. They merely wanted the results 
which this plan would bring when once installed. 
The problem to be solved was difficult. Its 
object once stated, would insure its defeat. As 
everybody who is anybody knows, the unpardon- 
able badge of dishonor in polite society is labor 
with the hands. It means acknowledged in- 
feriority if one cannot compel others to do his 
manual service. Work-begrimed fingers are 
proof positive that one earns his bread instead 
of exploiting it from others, and since we have 
had a "governing class" no gentleman has ever 
earned his bread in the sweat of his own face. 
Nowhere better than in the navy has this lesson 
been bred into the bone. It is one of the navy's 
most holy traditions. 

Circumstances and the ante-Roosevelt plan of 
organization made the rule difficult of application. 
Those beautiful floating palaces, the ocean war 
dogs of Uncle Sam, are put together by skilled 
human hands. Only the brain that plans for and 
guides these human hands can fully understand 
the complicated mechanism instinct with throb- 
bing life. Only hands deft with practice can 
restore deranged mechanism. 

Young midshipmen guide the fortunes of these 
complicated fighting engines. Responsibility for 
their condition is put upon these young men. 
Training must fit them for this responsibility. 
This is impossible without actual work day after 



Roosevelt and the Republic 63 

day with hand and brain. Even after the work 
of the school the naval man must live with his 
engines if he is to know and understand them. 

This means grimy hands. Grimy hands do not 
harmonize well with the immaculate whiteness 
of above-deck dress parade. Naval officers above 
deck could not live up to their traditions and 
fraternize with the grimy ones. Engineer of- 
ficers might emerge reeking with grease and of- 
fend the punctillious propriety of |my Lord Ad- 
miral of His Majesty's ship Invincible. My lady 
may take deadly offense at the greasy fellow, you 
know. It was quite impossible that there should 
be a class of manual- working commissioned en- 
gineers ranking with the officers of the line above 
deck. To make this impossible officially as well 
as socially was the problem set for Roosevelt 
to solve. 

Roosevelt faced the issue. His prodigious ex- 
perience of several long months in the depart- 
ment peculiarly fitted him for the task. He knew 
how to handle congressmen. He headed a board 
of naval officers who made recommendations and 
submitted a personnel bill. It was really the 
piano-polished measure which we have met be- 
fore. This time Roosevelt was proud to 
acknowledge it as his progeny. Secretary Long 
added the weight of his authority to that of 
his assistant. As a result the bill got an im- 
petus which finally placed it upon the statute 
books. No begrimed mechanic can now fra- 
ternize with the fighting gentlemen of the navy. 
We have a personnel bill as irreproachable from 
the standpoint of caste as that of ^ny European 



64 Roosevelt and the Republic 

aristocracy. But its efficiency. Oh! that is an- 
other story. 

In its way, the personnel bill is a wonderful 
measure. When it came first before Congress, 
the New York Nation pointed out that it would 
require each Annapolis graduate to be an in- 
fantry drillmaster, hydrographer, electrician, 
navigator, naval tactician, strategist, ordnance 
expert, acquainted with the making of guns, gun- 
powder, projectiles, armor, torpedoes; expert 
machinist, mechanical engineer — and all in the 
limited course, taking a grammar school educa- 
tion as a starting point. Nobody looks for such 
midshipmen prodigies. The thing was absurd. 
Naval men turned their backs squarely upon the 
modern lesson of specialization, the only method 
in matters of this sort, leading to efficiency. They 
tried to turn back the dial to the time of sail 
fighting craft. The dial would not turn. Gen- 
telmen fighting men were preserved in their spot- 
lessness. We paid the price. 

When the test comes we are likely to find that 
ability to manage warships and fight them, has 
been sacrificed to the exigencies of the ballroom. 
There are those who trace the dire disaster of 
the Bennington with its sacrifice of scors of 
human lives, to the inefficiency of midshipmen in 
looking after modern ships. Midshipmen are 
not to blame. It is the system of which the per- 
sonnel bill is an application. There have beer 
a superfluity of naval accidents these late years. 
A fleet commander cannot steer his fleet into 
New York Harbor without running it aground. 
When our next war comes, there is a serious 



Roosevelt and the Republic 65 

question as to whether we shall have skilled en- 
gineers to man our vessels. We have neither 
thorough drill-masters, nor hydrographers, nor 
electricians, nor strategists, nor navigators 
among the young men receiving our naval com- 
missions. What the final result may be is not 
nice to contemplate. We are trying to remedy 
it by marooning civilian warrant officers upon 
our ships. 

Fathering this sort of plan was Roosevelt's 
great work in the navy department. To be sure 
his biographers made him responsible for the 
efficiency of the fleet in the Spanish war. Every 
ship engaged in that war, with insignificant ex- 
ceptions, was afloat and equipped before Roose- 
vlt came into the service. Target practice had 
already become a policy among naval officers. 
There is no record of Roosevelt having trained 
either Dewey or Schley. Watson never went to 
his school. Probably he could not teach Evans 
how to fight. 

Roosevelt's connection with the navy was char- 
acteristic. While the navy was seeking legisla- 
tion and talking reorganization and expansion, 
Roosevelt was in the thick of the fray with pen 
and voice. When it faced Spain on the one 
hand, and on the other as conscienceless a band 
of civilian free-booters as ever traitorously tried 
to make riches out of their country's necessities, 
Roosevelt sought laurels in more spectacular 
fields. He remained long enough, however, to 
see what service he might have been to the nation 
if he had been content to work in inglorious 
silence. A man of stern personal integrity in 



(^ Roosevelt and the Republic 

financial matters, as Roosevelt undoubtedly is, 
was needed sorely right there to fight American 
ghouls rather than Spanish soldiers. Roosevelt 
preferred to give over the inglorious task to a 
new and untried successor. 

His rough-riding brought him more spectac- 
ular glory. He got more newspaper notice and 
better paved the way for higher place in the 
governing class. His service to his country, 
however, in the Spanish war was infinitesimal as 
compared with what it might have been if he 
had stuck to his post in the Navy Department. 
There were plenty of volunteers to fight the 
Spaniards in the field, few to fight the grafters 
at home. 

Roosevelt claimed a hand in bringing about 
the Spanish war. Such a distinction was not a 
thing to envy, for it would be difficult to imagine 
a more needless and therefore a more iniquitous 
war, or one fraught with direr consequences to 
the aggressor nation. Possibly Roosevelt as as- 
sistant naval secretary sent the Maine upon its 
, fool's errand of bluff to death and destruction in 
Havana harbor. The man who was responsible 
for that fine piece of strategy might well claim 
credit for the war, much as the picador with his 
red rag may claim credit for bringing on the bull 
fight. Sacrificing uselessly the lives of 260 
American sailors and officers may be mentioned 
as another item in the credit account of the man 
responsible for the visit of the Maine. At all 
events Roosevelt felt that since he had had a 
hand in bringing about the war, he must take 



Roosevelt and the Republic (yj 

an active part in that "bigger hunting expedi- 
tion" of the tropical summer. 

To be sure, America had then no dearth of 
fighting men. Literally an army of a million 
could have been raised. The struggle was not ' 
serious in magnitude, however serious the results. 
Physical cowards are a rare human product. But 
men away from the blare of trumpets and the 
roll of drums, from the inspiring ''glory" of 
waving flags and booming guns, away from the 
eye of the news reporter, with no hope of crown- 
ing fame who will sit down and battle to the 
death silently with the sordid powers that prey, 
are scarce indeed. Roosevelt had the opportun- 
ity. He fled the field of silent heroism for the 
spectacular field of glory. This glory came. 

Excitement, Theodore Roosevelt finds the very 
breath of life. The Spanish war ofifered real 
new thrills. Aside from book knowledge, Roose- 
velt knew little of military matters and nothing 
of war. But Roosevelt had the divine gift of 
self-confidence. If he were called upon to fresco 
St. Peters and promised a brass band accom- 
paniment, a newspaper writeup with scare head- 
lines and a commission from magazine and book 
publishers to tell how he did it, he would under- 
take the task. This courage to undertake has 
been an important element in the success of his 
career. 

Possibly Roosevelt has no gift of painting, but 
he has a gift for military leadership. It meets 
an intense aspiration. He is fitted for it as for 
nothing else. Had fate placed him in proper 
sUxToundings, he might have attained great prom- 



68 Roosevelt and the Republic 

inence as a military man. Keener still is his 
dramatic sense. He would have made a ''yellow 
journal" editor such as this country has not 
known, had his lines been laid in such pleasant 
places. As a circus manager he would have 
rivalled Barnum. Nobody else saw as Roose- 
velt saw the picturesque possibilities of a rough 
rider regiment. Few others understood the vista 
of newspaper advertising opened up by that idea. 
\^olunteer regiments were just volunteers from 
this or that state, important only to the state that 
sent them. Roosevelt would head a regiment 
that would have the eyes of the world upon it 
as a novel military experiment. Possibly no 
other person had the insistence and means of ad- 
vertising to get together such a body of men. 
It was certainly a laudable ambition upon Roose- 
velt's part to have the whole country watch him 
fight and see how well he could do it. He took 
the most effective way of producing this result. 
Roosevelt went into the Spanish war under con- 
ditions which to him were most auspicious. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 69 



CHAPTER IX. 

LEADER OF ROUGH RIDERS. 

When men and nations stand up to be judged 
before some higher, more clear-sighted civiHza- 
tion of the future years, the part played by many 
American newspapers and public officers in forc- 
ing a war with Spain will not be a subject of 
highest praise. 

Wild stories with slight foundation were sown 
broadcast among the American people. Spain 
certainly was not wholly responsible for the de- 
vastation which meant gaunt famine and grim 
pestilence in Cuba. Patriot Cubans killed and 
burned as well as the Spaniards. To be sure, 
Spain had no business in Cuba exploiting its 
island people for Spain's selfish advantage. But 
Spain was not unique in that regard. Nearly all 
nations were doing it then, and are doing it 
now\ But let us grant that Spain deserves little 
S}Tnpathy for the humiliation that is hers. Then 
we must add that the course which the United 
States has pursued in Cuba. Porto Rica and 
more especially the Philippines, fully justifies 
Spain so far as America assumes to be a critic. 

America might have been sincere in April, 
1898. The American people, as distinguished 
from official America, undoubtedly were sincere 



70 Roosevelt and the Republic 

in taking Spain to task "in the name of human- 
ity," for her Cuban misdeeds. In this year of 
grace, 1908, America is in no such position. 
With traditions of Hberty and self-government 
making silent but indignant protest, America has 
followed Spain in her programme of oppression; 
followed her without the necessities of Spain. 
Spain was merely holding what she considered 
her own and what the rest of the world con- 
ceded to be hers. She was ruling Cuba as her 
traditions taught her to rule. America robbed 
Spain **in the name of humanity," and adopted 
Spain's murderous policy to retain the plunder. 
Spain might have been a monster of tyranny. 
America became a monster of tyranny and 
hypocrisy. Spain despoiled and oppressed be- 
cause it was the only governmental lesson she 
knew. America threw to the winds her most 
sacred tenets in order to plunge into a carnival 
of oppression and despoliation. We would par- 
don in the slum-dweller what we would consider 
heinous in the college professor. America has 
descended from the seats of the mighty, who are 
mighty because they are just and free into the 
pack of plunderers and slave-drivers of whom 
Spain was a most unhappy and warning example. 
Apart from all this, America was unjust to 
Spain. It took the violent and bloody course in 
securing what might have been won by patient 
but persistent firmness. Spain was as tired of 
the Cuban contest as was the rest of the world. 
But Spain was proud. America knew it. Wise 
America would have considered Spanish pride 
and would have left open a possible highway of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 71 

retreat without vital humiliation. Spain wsls 
ready to meet such a movement more than half 
way. She had already conceded more than would 
have been asked of any strong nation no matter 
how monstrous the provocation. That did not 
suit the war-makers. They wanted blood — "a 
bigger hunting." 

America furnished the first victims. Baited 
and at bay Spain was put under the menace of 
American guns, bristling from an American war- 
ship. If Spain was friendly, such a threat was 
an insult. Inclined merely to be hostile, these 
guns were an irritant. In any view it was a 
piece of imbecility, for it promoted trouble with- 
out providing means to meet it. It was the wild 
west way of showing good will — by trenchant 
display of many big guns. Some insane Span- 
iard probably set a match to the fuse which 
America had laid. Two hundred and sixty brave 
men of the Maine were sacrificed to as rank 
a piece of fool-hardy official bluster as often mars 
the history of a sober nation. War-makers had 
won. Frenzy seized America. Revenge! 

Ofificial Spain was undoubtedly as much 
shocked as was the rest of the world. It was 
willing to have an impartial tribunal ascertain 
the facts. America would none of it. Spain 
acceded to America's request for an armistice 
with the Cuban patriots. Reconcentrado camps 
would be broken up. "Butcher" Weyler had 
gone home. This country cried : "Remember the 
Maine!" Official Washington pretended not to 
understand what Spain said. Before President 
McKinley sent his war message — two weeks be- 



72 Roosevelt and the Republic 

fore, — he knew and the State Department knew 
that Spain was anxious for a peaceful settlement 
— even would give up Cuba. 

Whether Senators or Congressmen knew it 
also, we cannot say. Certain it is, the informa- 
tion was not given officially to Congress nor at all 
to the country. War-makers were in the saddle. 
They captured the President. 

Fortunately for Roosevelt, he missed the staff 
position that he sought with Lee and turned his 
attention to the Rough Riders. His lack of mili- 
tary experience was amply compensated by his 
talent for using others for his own purposes. 
Surgeon Leonard Wood was this time a willing 
victim. Captain Allyn Capron was induced to 
leave the Second Cavalry. He furnished the 
military talents for the Rough Rider enterprise. 
Roosevelt became its all-sufficient press agent and 
promoter. His knowledge of the political wires 
in Washington, supplemented by that of Dr. 
Wood, proved invaluable. With this and the 
long purses of their friends, they had no trouble 
in securing equipment. Additional regular army 
officers were placed in subordinate places to 
leaven the loaf. 

No vulgar "ordinary farmer" or *'city me- 
chanic" marred this new military aggregation. 
It was made up of proper gentlemen of the East 
with zest for a man-hunt, and wild, reckless 
frontiersmen who loved strife for strife's sake. 

Six weeks on the Southwestern plains gave the 
regiment the rudiments of discipline. Official 
pull rounded out the equipment so that this one 
regiment was on about the same footing as the 



Roosevelt and hie Republic ^3 

regular troops. Where other volunteers had 
black powder, short-range Sprin,2^field rifles and 
a paucity of artillery, the Rough Riders had 
smokeless powder, the regulation flat-trajectory, 
long-range rifle, machine and dynamite guns. 

Pull energy and insistence, vulgarly known as 
"gall" or *'cheek" put the Rough Riders on 
the Yucatan with the regulars of the first 
army of invasion, bound for Cuba. Roose- 
velt "stood in with the navy," and in the struggle 
through the surf at Daiquiri, naval assistants 
gave the Rough Riders preference over the reg- 
ulars. It was a most important service. Be- 
cause of it Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were 
some of the first to emerge from the tangle on 
Cuban soil. 

Blithely did everybody look forward to the 
advance. It was to be a holiday jaunt. Span- 
iards could not or would not fight. This was the 
cheerful view taken by nearly all Americans, but 
more especially by the men of the army. They 
had forgotten the lesson that Napoleon once 
learned in Spain. If this man or that was to 
share in the "glory'' he must get early into the 
"mess." It was to be merely a race for "glory." 
That was all. 

Strange as it may seem to those who read 
the history of this struggle, however, the officers 
of our army seem actually to have had a plan 
for attacking Santiago. Lawton was to feel out 
the Spanish line in a flanking movement to the 
right, working his way about the city until he had 
it invested from the land side. This would coop 
up the Spanish troops, cut off their supplies and 



74 Roosevelt and the Republic 

(inally result in their capture. Frontal attack, 
especially assault, was not to be attempted. 

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang 
aft a-gley." Soon this "agleyness" became a 
foregone conclusion. Cavalry and infantry 
started a contest for ''first blood." Volunteer 
cavalry contested with the regular cavalry for the 
same honor. Plans did not count. Scores of 
officers must not miss bagging a Spaniard before 
the season closed. Leaders must secure a trophy 
of this ''bigger hunt" in the tropics. 

Gen. Wheeler was ordered to proceed to Jura- 
gua and to throw forward pickets to Juraguacita 
or Siboney so as to get in touch with Gen. Linares' 
Spaniards and to observe their position. The 
old Confederate cavalry fighter was warned not 
to bring on an engagement until Gen. Lawton 
had pushed into position and until the remaining 
troops had been landed and organized for ad- 
vance. Officers who took time to think thanked 
their stars that the Spaniards had not cut them to 
pieces in the surf and on the beach as they might 
have done. These officers wished to tempt fate 
no further by trusting to blind chance. 

No such consideration entered Gen. Wheeler's 
head. Here was an opportunity to serve the flag 
he had once abandoned, and this opportunity 
would not be missed. Hogsheads of ink and 
acres of display type would exploit the officer 
who "started things" in Cuba. Gen. Wheeler 
wanted it known that he was serving the Union. 
Brigade and regimental officers were his way of 
thinking. The men wanted to get at the Span- 
iards. What mattered it that no thought had 



Roosevelt and the Republic 75 

been taken for the morrow, that there were no 
provisions, no adequate transportation for provi- 
sions, no tents, no medicines, no hospital service 
available, no ambulances, no proper ammunition 
trains, no reserves available for support should 
the attack develop serious resistance. 

Gen. Young says in his official report of Las 
Guasimas that *'I asked and obtained from Gen. 
Wheeler (commanding the cavalry division) au- 
thority to make a reconnoisance in force for this 
purpose." (The purpose of obtaining positive 
information as to the position and movements of 
the enemy in front.) 

Gen. Wheeler did not put it in quite that way. 
He found the Cubans overjoyed with the pros- 
pect of going to battle shoulder to shoulder with 
their American deliverers. Cubans knew the 
country. Therefore it was not necessary that 
the American army officers should know it. Gen. 
Wheeler, probably to gratify the joy of the 
Cubans, at all events directly in the face of 
orders to the contrary from his superior officers, 
"resolved to attack as early (in the day) as pos- 
sible." 

Whether Wheeler was weakly inveigled by 
the ardent Young, Roosevelt et al., into making 
an attack under the guise of a reconnoisance in 
force, or whether deliberately ignoring orders he 
"resolved to attack" an indefinite number of 
Spaniards in an unknown position, is difficult to 
determine. He had an opportunity to outrun 
Lawton and his infantry in the race for first 
blood, and he could not resist, neither could his 
officers. Lawton, on the other hand, was ham- 



^d Roosevelt and the Republic 

pered by his soldiery heeding of orders from his 
superiors, and the necessity of preparing to meet 
serious resistance before plunging into the fray. 

Accordingly, two squadrons of the Rough Rid- 
ers, dismounted, under Col. Wood and Lieuten- 
ant Col. Roosevelt, and a squadron each of the 
First and Tenth regulars, also dismounted, were 
lined up in the early morning on the Santiago 
road near Siboney 964 strong. There was to be 
a foot race for first blood, the regulars and the 
Rough Riders taking separate, but parallel trails. 
In column of twos or single file, as the exigencies 
of the trail permitted, the troops rushed forward 
in their race for glory into an unknown and by 
them, unexplored jungle, in some part of which 
an enemy lurked. 

Regulars went to the right. Rough Riders to 
the left. With the main body treading upon the 
heels of the scouts, the race went on. It must 
have delighted the heart of the most crass and 
fool-hardy among the reckless Rough Riders. 
The troops were like two bands of schoolboys 
racing for a berry patch, ignoring the guarding 
bulldogs. 

Col. Wood's Rough Riders started fifteen min- 
utes later than the regulars, and if they were to 
be in at the killing they must make the dust fly. 
Company and subaltern officers seem to have 
been ordered to sacrifice everything to making 
speed forward. Young was with the regulars in 
person. Possibly he was more cautious than his 
rival runners, Wood and Roosevelt. Whether 
through caution or luck, he did discover the 
Spaniards in time to deploy his men and plant his 



Roosevelt and the Republic 'jy 

Hotchkiss guns for the trouble to come. Young 
says that he sent a Cuban to Wood to warn him 
of the danger and that the regulars delayed the 
attack so that the action of both flanks should 
begin simultaneously. Gen. Wheeler came up 
and pronounced the arrangement good. Then 
came the attack, "simultaneously on both wings.'' 
Americans drove the Spaniards forward from the 
ridge beyond; or the Spaniards repulsed the 
American attack and then retreated, or with- 
drew their skirmish line. One can take his own 
view of the matter according to his bias or his 
judgment. 

As we see it, the Rough Riders ran into an 
ambuscade through the impetuous folly of their 
officers and were needlessly slaughtered. They 
were saved from utter rout only by the individual 
courage of the men, and the timely support of 
the Tenth regulars who had been more fortunate. 
Sixty-eight of the brave fellows fell in the use- 
less race for glory, sixteen of whom found 
graves in Cuba. Captain Allyn Capron, who did 
more than any other man in the Rough Riders' 
organization to produce the efficiency which was 
to give glory to others, was among the slain. 

This was Roosevelt's first baptism of blood 
and fire. He stood it bravely as the rest, con- 
tent to share with them the result of the blunder 
for which he was, no doubt, in part responsible. 

Precariously did the racers cling to their posi- 
tion while Wheeler appealed earnestly for sup- 
port. Fortunately the Spaniards had no inten- 
tion of holding this ground. It marked for them 
a mere skirmish line. They lost from seven to 



78 Roosevelt and the Republic 

eleven killed. Everything indicates that the 
Americans got the worst of it. The cavalry got 
first blood — the blood of its own troopers. 

Wrath welled up in the heart of rough old 
General Lawton when he heard of the misadven- 
ture. He sent support, the coming of whom in 
full sight of the Spaniards probably helped on 
their retreat. But Lawton said unpleasant 
things. His infantry had been deprived of its 
position in the van. Plans of attack had to be 
reformed. Soldiers had to be rushed forward 
without supplies, rations or the means of getting 
them. Retreat was the alternative to frontal at- 
tack on the line of greatest resistance to Santiago. 
A blunder had been committed which would 
make the whole campaign doubly destructive and 
difficult. All to give Wood and Roosevelt's 
Rough Riders, Young's cavalry and Gen. Joe 
Wheeler the credit of having fought the first 
engagement before Santiago. 

Lawton told Wheeler plainly that the blood 
of Captain Capron and the slaughtered troopers 
was upon his head. There is no doubt as to 
the force of Americans who took part in the 
engagement — 964. Wild estimates of the Span- 
ish strength are made by American historians of 
the event. Roosevelt's 1,200 is certainly liberal 
enough. Yet Young says 2,000 to 2,500 and 
hints that there might have been 4,000 Spaniards 
in this fight of June 24. It is doubtful if the 
Spaniards at that time had 4,000' men supporting 
that whole line of defenses to Santiago. Lieu- 
tenant Miller Tejeira is probably close to the 
mark in placing the Spanish strength at seven 



I 



Roosevelt and the Republic 79 

companies and two guns under Gen. Rubin — 
about 800 men. 

Las Guasimas blundering is excused on the 
ground that it showed the Spaniards what fight- 
ers the Americans were. Spaniards fought just 
as hard at San Juan and El Caney. Las Guasi- 
mas developed the enemy's position. Very well. 
On July I the Americans knew so little of the 
Spanish position that they actually blundered 
into a place where they had to advance by des- 
perate assault or retreat in disastrous rout. So 
far as appears, two scouting companies could 
without bloodshed have done all that was accom- 
plished at Las Guasimas. If time had been taken 
for such orderly precedure, and if the advance 
had been organized properly before it was at- 
tempted, the army would have been spared untold 
suffering due to lacl<*of food, shelter, medical sup- 
plies and transportation facilities. The advance 
upon Santiago would not have been one-tenth as 
bloody. Many a brave fellow sleeping to-day 
under the Cuban palms would still have been 
breathing the free air of America; many in- 
valided for life by unbearable hardships would 
still have been useful citizens. Las Guasimas 
was the initial blunder of a tragedy of official 
errors before Santiago. In the face of a more 
resolute and enterprising foe, it would have been 
the initial disaster, resulting in courts martial in- 
stead of glory for the responsible officers. Pos- 
sibly these officers had the keenness to judge 
their foe aright and deserve credit for their 
wisdom. 

4: * « * 3|c H: ♦ 



8o Roosevelt and the Republic 

(Note)— I. Rough Riders had 500 men. 
Eight were killed and 34 injured. Regulars lost 
seven killed and eighteen wounded. 

(Note) — 2. Lodge says: "Then suddenly there 
were hostile volleys pouring through the brush 
and a sound like the singing of wires overhead. 
No enemy was to be seen. The smokeless powder 
gave no sign. The chapparal screened every- 
thing. Under the intense heat the men had al- 
ready given way. Now they began to drop, some 
wounded and some dead." 

If running into brush infested by an unseen 
foe and encountering fire from an unseen enemy, 
fire to which the troops could not reply, was sur- 
prise, then the Rough Riders were surprised. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 8i 



CHAPTER X. 

SAN JUAN AND DAYS THAT FOLLOWED. 

Las Guasimas sobered Americans somewhat, 
and eke the Rough Riders. After all this war 
was not to be a holiday jaunt. Admiral Samp- 
son had shown more enthusiasm than judgment 
in his cable message that ten thousand men could 
take Santiago in forty-eight hours. 

Still American commanding officers were not 
ready to begin work before Santiago in a busi- 
ness-like manner. They must adopt Wheeler's 
blunder and follow the line of maximum resist- 
ance into Santiago. Still there was no concerted 
plan, no holding of division officers to their 
place, no organization of an adequate transporta- 
tion or medical or hospital service. Wagons and 
ambulances and medical supplies, with few excep- 
tions, had been left at Tampa or on the trans- 
ports. By some hocus pocus of political schem- 
ing or some queer freak of fortune, a general 
who needed a steam winch and a soft mattress 
for transfer was placed in command, and things 
moved with consistent rapidity. Thus far it had 
been a comic-opera war. The dread tragedy of 
the thing liad scarcely begun. 

Gen. Wheeler got two batteries June 28th and 
29th and wanted Shafter to let him reduce £1 



82 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Caney. Shafter preferred to let Lawton do it, 
as originally planned. With abominable judg- 
ment, Wheeler thought it would be a skirmish 
of an hour. This opinion seemed to have been 
shared to some extent by Shafter and made 
disastrous his whole plan for the San Juan fight. 
In fact El Caney was the most stubborn battle 
of the war. Lawton's whole division of about 
5,000 men, outnumbering the Spaniards at least 
five to one — probably seven or eight to one, 
fought before El Caney from early morning 
until late in the afternoon. When the battle 
was over four American officers and eighty-four 
men lay dead before the little gray church an^l 
the antiquated fort, and twenty- four officers and 
232 men had been taken to the rear wounded. 
But a handful of the 500 or 700 Spaniards were 
found in the little grimy Spanish town when it 
surrendered. Their general lay dead with most 
of his men. 

It was a strategic point, which meant water 
and food for the Spaniards, and the few men who 
could be spared to defend it fought with most 
desperate valor. There were tangled masses of 
human debris in the Spanish rifle pits. Broken 
and v/ounded men moaned in the little dim- 
lighted church. Tangled heaps of slain showed 
ghastly upon the roads. Spaniards fought from 
house to house in the village, in the little church, 
in the blockhouses to the right, and finally in a 
boulder strewn field. Retreat was cut off by the 
Second brigade. Only a body of Spanish cav- 
alry escaped early in the engagement and those 
under artillery fire. Lawton and Chaflfee had 



Roosevelt and the Republic 83 

reconnoitered their position and had fought as 
skillfully as gallantly. If the battle had been 
left to Gen. Wheeler and Las Guasimas methods, 
it is difficult to say what El Caney might have 
cost. 

According to plans made by the ponderous 
military genius in command of the army, Lawton, 
supported by Bates with his independent infantry 
was to take El Caney, sweep about the Spanish 
left and strike the Spaniards on the left flank, 
doubling them back upon Santiago, while Kent 
and Sumner, who had succeeded Wheeler, ill on 
June 30 when the attack of the next day was 
planned, were to move forward toward San Juan 
and get in position for a general attack as soon 
as Lawton had successfully executed his tvirning 
movement, and come into touch with Sumner's 
right. Duffield was to make a demonstration 
before Aguidores and keep the Spaniards in the 
dark as to the real point of attack. 

It was not a bad plan, but the commander of 
ponderous physical weight had not taken the 
trouble to learn anything of the character of the 
field of battle. He had reckoned, too, without 
taking into account the desperate character of 
Spanish valor when pressed into a corner. 

Spanish troops occupied a steep, rugged ridge 
of hills in front of Santiago, covered by in- 
trenchments and guarded by a fort or blockhouse, 
called San Juan. This position was flanked upon 
the extreme American right by El Caney and on 
the extreme American left by Aguidores, both 
out of full touch with the main position. The 
American front, or rather the American line of 



§4 Roosevelt and the Republic 

march into position formed an acute angle witfi 
this ridge, the left of the American position 
coming into close touch with it. Gen. Wheeler 
says he knew the ground between the armies and 
told Shafter of its character. Whether or no 
Wheeler's information was insufficient or Shafter 
misunderstood it, there can be no question about 
the blundering. Shafter ordered Kent and Sum- 
ner's divisions forward two miles from their posi- 
tion near El Poso to bivouac and await the result 
of Lawton's attack. They were to move into 
position very early on the morning of July i and 
Lawton was to begin his attack upon El Caney 
still earlier. 

Sumner, according to Col. Roosevelt, knew 
nothing of the ground he was to occupy until 
the day of the battle. Stephen Bonsai says Sum- 
ner knew no more about the creek bed he was 
to hold or the ground beyond than he did about 
the topography of central Borneo. Hawkins 
seems to have been no better informed. Execut- 
ing Shafter's order brought them both under 
Spanish artillery and Mauser fire at from 800 to 
1,500 yards range. Our ponderous commanding 
genius actually sent these two divisions into a 
death-trap — a fine place to bivouac and to await 
results ! 

Repeatedly the American artillery was tried to 
cover the advance of the troops, but with its 
black powder it could make no stand against the 
masked Spanish batteries. Each attempt ended 
not only disastrously to the artillery, but also to 
the troops it attempted to support. The clouds 
of smoke made a target for the dons. 



Roosevelt and the Republic S5 

Troops found the jungle impracticable and 
were obliged to advance along the roads, in con- 
centrated order. Finally when the roads became 
untenable the Americans were deployed in the 
jungle and under cover of the creek banks which 
lay between them and the Spaniards. But the 
Spaniards had the range of the American lines, 
and their deadly fire never ceased. 

All that long hot morning bullets sang the 
song of death in the jungle, along the narrow 
trails and in the glades before San Juan. The 
scythe of the grim reaper spung unseen. Men 
turned over and groaned or threw up their arms 
wildly and fell forward. Only a little blue mark 
told the story. Or was it a shrapnel shell that 
came screaming like an angry demon and turned 
a whole platoon of our devoted men into a mass 
of quivering, groaning mangled flesh? Our men 
could not reply for they could not see the foe. 
It was like fighting air. They had only to pur- 
sue, doggedly, grimly under the scorching tropi- 
cal sun along the quagmire trail or through the 
tangled jungle, their march of death. 

A captive balloon tugged at its cable. Bullets 
buzzed and whistled about it like a hive of bees. 
Down the cable came the deadly humming, until 
the brave fellows at its base caught the death 
hail. Congested on the trails, massed at the 
fords, tangled in the jungles, they crept on, the 
same song of death sounding dirgelike in men's 
ears. At every turn the same spiteful, hissing 
stealthy messengers took their companions from 
them as the troops moved on. It was a trying 
ordeal for seasoned veterans. For volunteers, 



86 Roosevelt and the Republic 

it was more than flesh and blood could stand, 
to remain just targets for a deadly fire from an 
unseen foe. For the troops with the long-range 
rifles and the smokeless powder, there was still 
some hope. They could volley back at random 
the deadly leaden storm. But for the men with 
Springfields, firing meant merely a smoke target 
and sure destruction. 

A less ponderous mihtary genius would not 
have sent the infantry and dismounted cavalry 
into such a death trap. He would have had his 
longer range artillery and a line of skirmishers 
keep the Spaniards in their trenches until Law- 
ton had done his work at El Caney. If the real 
attack upon San Juan had come a day later and 
had been accompanied by a flanking movement 
on the part of Lawton, it is probable that the 
ridge would have been taken without great re- 
sistance. 

Like a horse in a quagmire, the more the 
troops struggled, the deeper they sank into the 
mire of their impossible position. They were 
paying in full measure for the folly of their 
officers in plunging into such a place without 
knowing their ground. After this heart-break- 
ing struggle forward through the sweltering 
jungle or along the steaming trails under the 
deadly Spanish fire and the scarcely less deadly 
tropical sun, the Americans finally found them- 
selves deployed before the Spanish position. 

Gen. Hawkins with the Sixteenth and Sixth 
United States infantry of Kent's division held 
an advanced position at a wire fence, beyond a 
wood at the foot of the hill just beyond the San 



Roosevelt and the Republic Sy 

Juan river. He made up the American center, 
almost facing fort San Juan. On the left were 
the Thirteenth and Twenty- fourth (colored) 
United States infantry, and still further to the 
left a little to the rear, the Ninth United States 
infantry. To the left still further in reserve were 
the Tenth, Second and Twenty-first United 
States infantry. To the right was the cavalry 
division — well to the right of San Juan fort and 
its defenses. The cavalry was placed with the 
Sixth regiment in touch with Hawkins' right, 
and the Third, Ninth, Rough Riders, Tenth and 
First regiments extending in this order to the 
right. Rough Riders were at the center of the 
cavalry line to the right of and quite beyond San 
Juan fort. A low hill lay in front of the cavalry 
division, called the Hill of the Kettles, or Blue- 
house hill. Beyond this there was a depression 
and then the San Juan ridge. When the Ameri- 
cans advanced they found a strong skirmish line 
on the Kettles Hill. 

Americans found that the Spaniards had the 
range of the American lines while Americans 
were only guessing at the location of Spain's en- 
trenchments. Iron men could not remain in- 
definitely mere targets for a concealed fire. The 
troops were beginning to show nervousness. 
Then was it realized that the army of invasion 
in Cuba was in a desperate position. Orders to 
"bivouac and await results of Lawton's attack" 
were seen to be absurd, for the battle was still 
raging at El Caney. 

Lieutenant Ord of Gen. Hawkins' staff found 
and climbed a very tall cocoanut tree. He it 



88 Roosevelt and the Republic 

was who first saw the exact Spanish position 
and located the San Juan fort. Hawkins saw at 
once that the only way to save the army was to 
assault and take San Juan hill. He returned to 
the ford and so told Kent and Sumner. They 
agreed. Col. Miley of Gen. Shafter's staff took 
the responsibility of directing Gen. Hawkins to 
advance with his brigade and capture San Juan 
blockhouse. Gen. Hawkins ordered his brigade 
brought forward and exploring further to the 
front, he discovered a trail leading to the open 
meadows at the foot of San Juan Hill. The 
Sixth and Sixteenth were deployed on either side 
of the trail as they came up. Hawkins sent for 
the Seventy-first New York, but the horrors of 
Aguidores ford and bloody angle were too much 
for the already overstrained nerves of the men, 
and they fell into confusion. Only scattered 
companies and groups of soldiers joining with 
the regulars made the charge. The Seventy- 
first is called a coward regiment. It is a vile 
aspersion. With their black-powder Spring- 
fields, worse than useless and their inefficient 
officers, they were put to a test to which no other 
soldiers even there submitted. They were not 
cowards who scaled San Juan heights with 
Rafferty — who kept step with their comrades 
without firing a shot, for that was the only con- 
dition upon which the separated companies and 
groups were permitted to participate. Regulars 
knew that black powder volleys would mean 
swift and certain death for the advancing troops. 
Hains' battery was put in position near the 
stream and Parker's gatlings were placed well 



Roosevelt and the Republic 89 

to the front. Emerging from the jungle the thin 
hnes reformed. What was left of the Sixth and 
Sixteenth under Hawkins lined up at the wire 
fence where the jungle joined the meadows. 
Soldiers were ready to do deeds praised by war- 
lovers for all time, or to stampede in broken dis- 
order back into the jungle whence they had come. 
Nerves were tense to the breaking point, ready 
for prodigies of valor, or utter failure. A yel- 
low streak anywhere then might have meant 
utter rout. 

As Hawkins waited at the river ford to get 
his men across and his strength in hand, there 
v;as a rush in the jungle ahead like a stampede 
of wild elephants. One hundred and fifty men 
in wild disorder broke through the bushes and 
bore down upon the general and his staff. When 
they met him there, standing like a granite 
boulder, they slowed down, halted, stood abashed. 
The panic died before his cold sternness. Per- 
emptorily he ordered the men back to the front. 

"I think I had better put them back in their 
position in the line," remarked Lieutenant Ord 
of the General's staff. "If I do not see you 
again, good-bye!" 

Ord swung ahead and the 150 men followed 
resolutely to the death of heroes or to heroic 
victory. Such is the narrow dividing line be- 
tween valor and cowardice upon such a field. 
One should be careful in applyingf epithets. 

Up to this time each soldier had fought alone 
in the dark jungle facing steadily death as best 
he may, and the final forming for the charge 
.was the most trying of all. Now they were to 



90 Roosevelt and the Republic 

have the support of fighting comrades at their 
elbows. There had been paltering. Now there 
was to be action. The supreme test. 

Parker's gatlings, well before the line began 
to drum in a fiercer, higher note. Hains' bat- 
tery stood the Mauser hail and the hell of Span- 
ish shrapnel, returning death for death. Big 
guns thundered from the invisible heights. 
Mauser bullets wailed and hissed in shriller 
tones. Machine guns barked and snarled like a 
pack of fighting wolves. Forward march, guide 
center! had been passed along the line. **To 
the charge!" rang out the bugle of the Six- 
teenth. 

On through the guinea grass swept the thin 
blue line against a gale of screaming lead that 
rolled over the meadow as a summer squall might 
a wheat field. With mechanical regularity, as 
from a machine, came the Mauser volleys from 
the ridge. The Spaniards realize ,that the su- 
preme test has come and the hail of bullet and 
shrapnel is redoubled. On goes the thin line, 
rising and falling, like the short waves in a 
choppy sea. Each platoon stands, fires, drops 
while another advances, then rushes on again. 
Across the meadow zig-zags the blue wave leav- 
ing in its wake writhing spots and masses of 
blue, but still it advances. At length the dead 
line is passed. The first blue wave has reached 
the very foot of the hill, which itself becomes 
a protection, for it masks the fire of the distant 
Spanish artillery and can scarcely be reached 
from the Mausers upon the hill's crest. For- 
tunately the Spaniards have fortified the ab- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 91 

solute crest of the hill instead of its military 
crest. It means much for the assailants. Bul- 
lets still sing dirges overhead, and shrapnel 
shrieks, but the message just now is for the blue 
lines in reserve. 

To the right on the Kettles Hill the Spanish 
outpost has given way, hurrying from its trenches 
and retreating upon San Juan ridge. Hawkins' 
advance threatens to cut it off. But we are 
climbing the hill with Hawkins. Getting thinner 
and thinner as it goes, the blue line surges up the 
steep slope toward the blockhouse. Parker 
stands by his red-hot guns, now silent. Hains 
has been signalled to cease artillery fire. Now 
the Spanish trenches are in sight and the blue 
line again full in range. Spaniards leap from 
their trenches as the blue line sweeps relent- 
lessly forward. A Cuban soldier stands in the 
open space before the trenches, hat in hand 
waving onward his American comrades. Span- 
ish fire becomes more erratic. Sullenly the de- 
fenders withdraw. The red and yellow flag of 
Spain falls upon the roof of the blockhouse, an 
omen of defeat. Soldiers of the Sixth and Six- 
teenth are already at the brink of the reeking 
bloody Spanish trenches, piled full with Spanish 
dead. 

Down through the depression from Kettles 
hill have swept the cavalry regiments pressing 
the retreating Spanish skirmishers. They have 
reached the foot of the great ridge even as the 
Sixth and Sixteenth have attained its crest. Cap- 
tain Bigelow of the Tenth cavalry with his dis- 
mounted troopers has almost overtaken his in- 



92 Roosevelt and the Republic 

fantry brothers. Lieutenant Short and his troop 
of the Sixth cavalry is at his shoulder. All along 
the ridge the Spanish line wavers and falls back. 
The Thirteenth, Ninth and Twenty-fourth sweep 
in from the left and scour the ridge as far as 
the haciendo in front of the cavalry position. 
It was the Thirteenth which captured the fallen 
Spanish flag. Lieutenant Preston of the Six- 
teenth whose trumpeter sounded the charge, 
brings up the national and regimental colors, 
and they wave over the fort as the crowning 
signal of conquering success. Troopers have 
climbed the ridge to the right in open order, up 
to the haciendo, meeting a withering fire from the 
second Hne of Spanish trenches. Now the whole 
ridge is ours. 

Dearly had we paid for it. More than i,ooo 
American soldiers who the day before had 
throbbed with vigorous, promising, useful life, 
now mangled into masses of insensate flesh 
awaited the awful repast of the low-circling vul- 
tures ; or battered into moaning wrecks strewed 
San Juan field from foot to crest. Moaning sol- 
diers lay scattered through the jungles. Mangled 
bodies were strewn bloodily in every thicket. 
Many crawled away in the agony of their terror 
and despair to die alone in the jungle fighting 
solitary with the awful vultures and land crabs 
to delay their feast until the merciful sleep of 
lethe had prepared the board. Fords of the 
stream were shambles; road forks a slaughter 
pen. Still the rain of death fell upon unhurt, 
wounded and dying, upon tent and hospital 



Roosevelt and the Republic 93 

ground. It seemed as though the trees, front 
flank and rear rained Spanish bullets. 

Scarcely more fortunate were the wretches who 
had been picked up by the hospital corps to be 
taken to the rear. Loaded in springless wagons, 
jolted over well nigh impassable roads, thrown 
into mangled, smothering heaps, left in the tropi- 
cal dews and tropical suns to live again in fever 
delirium the terrors of the march and the horrors 
of the battle, probably a more merciful fate befell 
those who perished at once. 

San Juan had been taken and the disaster of 
an impossible retreat under fire averted, but the 
blue lines clung precariously to the ridge as a 
dizzy man might cling to a narrow ledge over a 
mountain precipice. Gen. Sumner was hard 
pressed with his cavalry, and sent an urgent re- 
quest for support. The Thirteenth infantry was 
dispatched to their aid. 

All the long afternoon, with but one slight in- 
terval of rest, the Spaniards rained a withering 
fire upon the lost ridge. A counter charge was 
momentarily expected. All the long afternoon 
the blue lines hung on desperately and prayed for 
night. 

Where all this time was Theodore Roosevelt? 
Where were his Rough Riders of whom he was 
now in command, for Col. Wood temporarily 
headed a brigade? They were in the battle play- 
ing their part as gallantly as the rest, but it was 
a minor part. If Las Guasimas was exclusively 
a cavalryman's fight, San Juan and its victory 
belonged primarily to the infantry. But aside 
from that the cavalry division was only one-sixth 



04 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of the strength of the corps effectively engaged 
before Santiago on this July i, and the Rough 
Riders made up but one-fifth or less of the cav- 
alry. Therefore, the whole organization counted 
not more than one-thirtieth in the fight, for in 
this fight it was not prominent, and its com- 
mander could not have had a great influence 
upon the result. Bringing out such facts is not 
a grateful task, but Col. Roosevelt himself 
raised the issue. 

Gen. Wheeler, like other officers of the Span- 
ish-American war whose pens were no less 
mighty than their swords, wrote himself down 
as the head and center of the whole fight at San 
Juan. As he tells it, he reconnoitered the posi- 
tion, suggested the plan of battle and gave the 
order to attack. Non-military historians as well 
as military men of less literary distinction, have 
Wheeler ill on the day before San Juan and on 
the day of the battle. He was not at the war 
council the night before. Sumner had taken 
command of his division. This is not intended 
as a reflection upon Gen. Wheeler's veracity, but 
merely as indicative of his viewpoint. Gen. 
Wheeler, no doubt, sincerely felt that the whole 
responsibility of the fight was upon him, and the 
feeling was entirely pardonable. 

Lieutenant Col. Roosevelt with a still more 
mighty pen, little experience in actual warfare 
and a robust imagination in this sense, finds him- 
self doing most of the fighting and giving the 
really important orders at San Juan. In his 
"Rough Riders," which he evidently flung oflf 
.while the white heat of war enthusiasm was still 



Roosevelt and the Republic 95 

upon him, Roosevelt finds a regular regiment 
awaiting orders at the ford of San Juan, declares 
himself the ranking officer, orders the charge, 
leads the charge and, scaling the heights far in the 
van, drove hence the Spanish hordes. Reading 
this account, one feels that Roosevelt alone, like 
Winkelried, had turned the tide of battle, but 
unlike Winkelried he lived to write a book about 
it. Winkelried's age was not that of the finest 
bloom in literary warfare. It was only after 
Roosevelt's men had cleared the trenches and had 
seen their commander use his revolver upon a 
retreating Spaniard, bagging him on the fly, 
that the infantry appeared upon the ridge. 
Then Roosevelt and his men were with diffi- 
culty restrained from following the enemy 
right into Santiago. 

''Here I found myself at the front," says 
Roosevelt, *'in command of fragments of all six 
regiments of the cavalry division." This in his 
introduction to Parker's ''Gatling Guns." What 
had become of Wheeler, Sumner and Wood, not 
to speak of the other brigade and regimental 
officers, many of whom down to Lieutenant Col- 
onel must have outranked Roosevelt? Did all 
think themselves in command of all six regi- 
ments? Disinterested civilians like Bonsai say 
the infantry took the hill and the cavalry came 
afterward. That seems to be the fact. 

If one will follow his gatling story, Lieutenant 
Parker and his battery won the battle. After his 
four gatlings and his score of men had won 
San Juan, they actually made Santiago quite un- 
tenable for the Spaniards. Parker says many 



96 Roosevelt and the Republic 

other interesting things. He finds Shafter fight- 
ing a superior force of Spaniards. At San Juan 
Americans outnumbered the Spaniards at least 
two to one, while at El Caney we have seen that 
the Americans were still more overwhelming in 
numbers. And these facts do not detract in the 
least from the great valor of the American fight- 
ing men. 

We do not wish to insinuate that either Parker, 
Wheeler or Roosevelt consciously prevaricate as 
to San Juan. Each saw the fight from his own 
standpoint. Each thought himself the center of 
the fray, the hub about which the whole military 
wheel revolved. Each thought this all the more 
when he took up his mighty pen for the enlight- 
enment of his countrymen. Abnormal battle 
conditions when tense nerves make each man a 
kind of maniac, are not conducive to cool his- 
torical judgment. Accounts of participants in 
battle always lack perspective and are very un- 
safe as portrayals of what took place as a whole. 

Had not political exigencies magnified out of 
all proportions the services of Rough Riders, 
and especially the services of Gen. Joseph 
Wheeler and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, such 
a statement would not have been necessary. We 
would in that case, not have been obliged to go so 
fully into the details of the battle in order to 
show in true proportion the services of Roose- 
velt and his Rough Riders. Officers certainly 
cannot claim an undue proportion of the credit 
for San^ Juan. If ever a battle was bungled 
through inefficiency or recklessness in high places, 
it was San Juan. If ever desperate valor of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 97 

company officers and fighting men snatched 
victory out of defeat, it was still upon this gory 
ridge. To be sure when the higher officers found 
themselves enmeshed they struggled valiantly to 
extricate themselves. Their shame was in ever 
allowing themselves so to become enmeshed. 

Only when the troops were found clinging pre- 
cariously upon San Juan ridge, did the crime 
of their unpreparedness appear in all its hideous- 
ness. Soldiers themselves had thrown away 
blankets that they would sadly need in the des- 
perate struggle to the ridge and up the slope. 
But in all else the officers must bear the blame. 
Exhausted soldiers were without food, without 
water, without medicines, without shelter from 
the tropical rain and sun, without adequate means 
of caring for dead or wounded. Without in- 
trenching tools and without means of getting 
any of these necessities. In heaps at Siboney 
and on the transport were the things the absence 
of which were to mean death to many of the 
brave men who had passed unscathed through 
the hell of Spanish fire. 

As soon as merciful darkness closed upon the 
American lines, the desperate struggle began for 
intrenchment. Then, too, started the awful pro- 
cession of wounded for the rear. 



98 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XI. 

SANTIAGO FALLS. 

For two weeks after San Juan the siege of 
Santiago continued. Cuba's deadly climate anjl 
the reckless exposure of the troops made the 
American position each day more precarious. 
Fever proved more menacing than Spanish bul- 
lets. Never again in all this time did the Ameri- 
cans attempt to "rush" Spanish trenches. They 
had learned by experience that the Spaniard, like 
a hound at bay, would fight and fight hard, al- 
though he does not delight in fighting. 

Commenting upon thh changed attitude, Lieu- 
tenant Jose Miller y Tejeiro says> — 

'They intrenched themselves and set up their 
artillery as fast as they received it and did not 
again come out from behind their fortifications. 
Did they think on that first day that all they had 
to do was to attack our soldiers en masse and put 
them to flight ? God knows !" 

Shafter the ponderous, and the Spanish com- 
mander now played a game of blufif. Spanish 
blunders gave the American blunderer the win- 
ning card. Fortune cared for her fool. Had 
Cervera decided to perish in Santiago harbor as 
gallantly as he did outside, or had Spain's mili- 
tary idiots in high place permitted him to do so. 



Roosevelt and the Republic gg 

official incompetency and the awful fever would 
have destroyed Shafter's army before Santiago 
could have been taken. Scarcely ten per cent, 
of the American soldiers were able to fight when 
Toral signed the capitulation. Col. Roosevelt 
said that it would have weakened his command 
to detach a detail of twenty- four men. It seemed 
a trick of fate that the blunders of the Spaniards 
should have been so deadly in their effect while 
those of the Americans made little difference as 
to the final result. The decrepit old sinner of 
centuries withered away under Fortune's frown 
while the blind fate wiiich cares for children and 
idiots brought through in triumph the lusty 
western giant. 

While sickening American soldiers clung to 
the trenches before Santiago, starved, fever 
wracked, politics were relegated to the back- 
ground. Soon as the Spanish crimson and gold 
disappeared from the Morro, politics broke out 
afresh in the American army. Gen. Wheeler was 
ready to reap in political preferment the meed 
of his services against the troops of Spain. The 
tireless energy and horse sense concealed under 
Col. Roosevelt's brag and bluster had been of the 
greatest service to his command. Only when 
this work was done did he become again the 
circus manager, seeking notoriety. 

Opportunities came quickly. Miles' expedition 
to Porto Rica was the occasion for a noisy pro- 
nouncement as to the Rough Riders being worth 
any three regiments of volunteers. With char- 
acteristic caution our warrior explained that the 
other volunteers had black powder and inferior 



100 Roosevelt and the Republic 

arms. Just at this time a good strong wind 
would have blown into the Caribbean sea all 
that was left of the Rough Rider regiment in 
Cuba. The great majority of the erratic fight- 
ers were deathly sick. They needed a hospital 
more than a fresh campaign. Mercifully the 
military authorities recognized this and the sage 
advice of the pugnacious colonel ended as it 
began — in a display of printer's ink. 

This did not by any means exhaust Roose- 
velt's opportunities. He had often preached dis- 
cipline and obedience to superiors. But now the 
good Colonel found himself confronted by a con- 
dition. He promoted an assault on his superiors 
in the shape of a round robin, telling everybody 
from division general to Secretary of War, what 
must be done and done quickly. Many other 
officers had attached their names, but the country 
knew it only as Roosevelt's round robin. He 
and his Rough Riders sailed north with flying 
colors. It was time that they were back to their 
native heath that their leader might answer the 
curtain call. 

Fortunately Roosevelt's wonderful constitu- 
tion kept him in exceptional health and he proved 
a good angel to the less fortunate one.^ of his 
devoted command. There were pathetic scenes 
at Montauk Point, but as time wore on this 
great military hospital camp was turned into a 
parade and reception ground. The eyes of the 
country were upon it. Oceans of printers' ink 
flowed over the broad land bringing tidings of 
Montauk, and right in the center of the stage 
were Col. Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. No 



Roosevelt and the Repubuc ioi 

smallest piece of stage business which might 
impress the multitude was omitted. "Slouch" 
hats and brown duck ran a close second in 
popularity to "old glory" itself. 

By the time the Rough Riders were mustered 
out, Roosevelt, commander of five hundred men 
in an army of sixteen thousand, loomed big above 
every living soldier of the Republic. It was a 
miracle of skillful self-advertising on the part of 
this gallant military man. Here we had the 
dramatic instincts of youth exercised with all 
the skill and purpose of resourceful and ambitious 
manhood. 

At length this most skillful of all politicians of 
his day had secured the momentum which was 
to carry him to the long sought for heights in the 
"governing class." Before the Rough Riders 
were mustered out on Long Island Roosevelt's 
political fortune was made. We shall see. 



102 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XII. 

ROOSEVELT GETS THE NOMINATION". 

Before the August moon had waned greatly, 
Roosevelt and his friends were laying wires for 
the gallant Rough Rider's march upon Albany. 
Among the first of the men of mighty pen to 
turn out an account of Las Guasimas and San 
Juan written from the standpoint of the man in 
the fray who feels sure that the whole battle re- 
volved about his belt, he naturally made the first 
great impression. Nursed and pampered while 
at Montauk, carefully as the invalided soldiers, 
this impression had become strong. Rough rid- 
ing contests, statue presentations, sword fetes, 
auction sales, all these kept the public eye fo- 
cused upon Roosevelt. He was a national figure 
as prominent in the newspapers, almost, as Sec- 
retary Alger or President McKinley. This put 
him in fine fettle for the Albany campaign. 

Other conditions were found no less ideal for 
skillful manipulation. Governor Black had been 
giving an especially rotten administration. From 
civil service to canals he had gone the rounds 
and the odor of his actions smelled to high 
heaven. Withal the people of New York were 
not enamored of Richard Croker with his little 
Van Wyck puppet in the mayor's chair. Croker 



Roosevelt and the Republic 103 

at that time came nearer having the Democracy 
of New York in his vest pocket than has any 
Tammany pohtical boss before or since. 

This was an atmosphere in which the inde- 
pendent plant thrived amazingly. R. Fulton 
Cutting and a few kindred spirits had kept alive 
an independent organization, the Citizens' Union. 
John Jay Chapman acted as harbor pilot. Sage 
friends of Theodore Roosevelt whispered in the 
Cutting ear that if the Independents were look- 
ing for a man who would banish into outer dark- 
ness Black and his Payn, Aldrich and Piatt, and 
Richard Croker with his little Van Wyck, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt was their man. Politicians, es- 
pecially independent politicians, are proverbially 
short of memory. They had forgotten Blaine, 
civil service, the tariff of 1884, with their dem- 
onstration of the unswerving partisanship of 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

Roosevelt had acquired a new reputation as 
civil service reformer. He had filled much news- 
paper space as police reformer, who knew not 
party. The Independents were de-lighted. To 
be sure Roosevelt had been a bit cautious. His 
friends in approaching the Independents had 
come of their own accord. Roosevelt had had 
the thing merely mentioned to him, they said. 
But they felt convinced that Roosevelt, if prop- 
erly approached, would consent to be the stand- 
ard-bearer of the Independents. 

"Very well," remarked Cutting, Chapman et 
al., "we shall be de-lighted, but we do not care 
to take too much for granted. Suppose you 
friends see Roosevelt and tell him all about it. 



104 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Then if he consents we shall confer with him 
and start the ball a-rolling." You see the In- 
dependents were a bit cautious, too. 

The friends saw Roosevelt. "Yes, it was really 
true. Barkis was actually willin'." Cutting, 
Chapman et al. conferred with the gallant col- 
onel. All seemed of the same mind. Now had 
the opportune time come for casting out Piatt, 
Black, Payn, Croker and all the legion of poli- 
tical devils who beset fair New York. The only 
question was one of tactics. 

Cutting and his Independents were willing to 
make it a straight fight as Independents. They 
had sounded New York sentiment and they felt 
that non-partisanship would prove a strong card 
with the voters in both city and state affairs. 
Roosevelt more "practical" had his doubts. He 
loved the Independents dearly but he had some 
old sweethearts among the Republicans. How 
would it do to accept the Independents' nomina- 
tion, stand for their principles, and use the nomin- 
ation as a club to compel the Republicans to cast 
out in advance, Piatt, Black, Payn and the rest? 
Then the Magdalen Republican maiden of New 
York might wed the chaste Citizens' Union and 
together they would make a pair for righteous- 
ness such as had hardly ever before been seen. 

That was the one way of looking at the thing, 
the Independents admitted. They would nom- 
inate Roosevelt and let him after the nomination 
use the Independent backing as a club. If by 
its use he could capture the Republican nomina- 
tion also, so much the better. It would insure 
his success, and he would then have the nomina- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 105 

tion in spite of Piatt, Black and all the other 
powers of darkness. Such an administration as 
he would have for independence and virtue would 
be known even in Cohoes. If, however, the pious 
sword of the Independents did not prevail 
against the vile scimitar of Piatt — if Roosevelt 
failed to capture the Republican nomination in 
addition to the Independents' nomination, he 
would reserve the right, then and in that event, 
to reject also the independent nomination. In 
other words, w^hile the gallant colonel of Rough 
Riders loved the Independents and was enthusi- 
astic for reform, he did not care to commit him- 
self irrevocably to lead such a cause should it 
become a forlorn hope, as it might well become 
should the independent following fail to force 
the Republican machine to take its man. But if 
he was to run for governor at all, he was irrevoc- 
ably committed to the independent nomination. 
The Republican nomination must be additional. 

Cutting, Chapman et al. on their side, too, in- 
sisted upon one condition. Independents were 
to be free to select the other names which were 
to appear with Roosevelt upon the ballot. 
They were not to be all Republicans. It was 
a bargain and all parted happy and content. 

Far and wide over the state spread the Inde- 
pendents seeking to interest other candidates, 
with Democratic as well as Republican leanings. 
A statement was issued which Roosevelt saw and 
approved, and things were happy as marriage 
bells. 

Friends of Roosevelt, presumably not the same 
friends who dealt with the Independents, for 



io6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Roosevelt has all sorts, went to Piatt, Odell et al. 
and told them that Roosevelt had the Indepen- 
dents behind him. Without the Independents, 
the Republican party loaded with Black, Payn 
and Aldrich, could not hope to win. The only 
salvation was the nomination of Roosevelt by 
the regular Republicans. 

With surprising favor, Piatt, Odell et al. re- 
ceived it. They were pretty tired of Black and 
his crowd. Politicians are noted for discarding 
dull and worn tools when better are at hand. 
Black, Payn and Aldrich would make ex- 
cellent scapegoats for Piatt and Odell. The time 
was ripe for unloading machine burdens upon 
somebody. 

On Sunday, September eleventh came out what 
appeared to be an inspired statement from Col. 
Jerome. He said, speaking as one with author- 
ity, that Roosevelt had declared to him that 
Roosevelt was a Republican, always had been a 
Republican, and if elected would be governor of 
the ENTIRE PARTY. Mark ye of the EN- 
TIRE PARTY, not the State of New York. 

Like a douche of cold water this statement in 
the Sunday papers fell upon the enthusiasm of 
Cutting, Chapman et al. It looked like partisan- 
ship, and it was too boldly spoken to be classed 
as mere invention. Roosevelt was sought 
out and asked how about this? He strenuously 
denied the authenticity of Jerome's statement 
and let the good work of the Independents go on. 
While Piatt was respectful, still he had not been 
''thrown and hog-tied," to use an expression from 
ranch life, familiar to Col. Roosevelt. Roosevelt 



Roosevelt and the Republic 107 

knew the political game well enough not to trust 
too far this wily old wolf of politics. Roosevelt 
soothed Cutting, Chapman and their followers 
and stimulated them to circulate nominating peti- 
tions, again inspecting personally the statement 
sent out with the petitions. Soon Piatt would 
be where Roosevelt wanted him. 

This went on until September 18. On that 
day Roosevelt met Piatt and Odell in New York 
and a bargain was "signed and sealed." After 
that fateful Sunday word was sent down the line 
from the Piatt headquarters that it was to be 
Roosevelt. Immediately the machine cohorts 
began to shout, ''Roosevelt!" Black was left 
stranded high and dry with only Payn and 
Aldrich to do him reverence. Roosevelt had won 
the fight with Piatt. The sword of the Inde- 
pendents in the holy cause had overmatched 
the iniquitous scimitar of Piatt. 

Then Roosevelt has a qualm of conscience. 
After a decent hesitation of two days he wrote 
Cutting, Chapman and their friends that he was 
in an impossible position, and wanted an inter- 
view. Just then Roosevelt was in the position 
of a coquette who had engaged herself to two 
suitors and found their joint attentions em- 
barrassing. At the meeting, which took place 
September 23rd, Roosevelt, rather in sorrow 
than in anger, proffered back the ring to Cut- 
ting, Chapman and their Independents. Love In 
a cottage was all well enough as a means of 
getting the princely suitor interested, but really 
you know, — of course you understand, — as a 
serious proposition, it was quite impossible. Some 



io8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

way out of it must be found. Before they parted 
finally the ring was returned and Roosevelt took 
up life with the more opulent prince, — Prince 
Thomas C. Piatt of the political realm of New 
York. The final rupture took place Septem- 
ber 24. 

Cutting, Chapman and their friends, retired 
from their interviews with Roosevelt, sadder and 
wiser than they had been before. They would 
not compound this political bargain which they 
considered a political crime. As they viewed it 
the tempter had taken Roosevelt up into a high 
mountain and had shown him the kingdoms of 
the earth which would be his if he should fall 
down and worship. From their standpoint 
Roosevelt fell down. At least it was not re- 
corded that he had said either to Piatt or to 
Odell, "Get thee behind me Satan.'' 

Independents resolved to put a ticket in the 
field. They issued a statement setting forth the 
facts merely, without recrimination. It was in 
reply to Roosevelt's letter. But the Independents 
had shot their bolt, and Roosevelt knew it. He 
had thoroughly seen to that. The work which 
they had done for him without reserve preclud- 
ed effective work for any one else. Disgust- 
edly the rank and file of the Independnts, prob- 
ably some of their leaders also, dropped back 
into their old partisan wallows, following their 
gallant betrayer. The bolt was all-sufficient for 
Roosevelt. It secured hjm the Republican nom- 
ination and that was what he started out to get. 

If a cleverer piece of political manipulation 
can be found in the history of the United States, 



I 



Roosevelt and the Republic 109 

it has escaped our notice. Roosevelt demon- 
strated himself a past master at the game of poli- 
tics. Squeamish persons might object to the bad 
faith involved, but they show their want of 
appreciation of greatness by judging Roosevelt 
by ordinary standards. What would have been 
rank trickery in Piatt, Quay, or Gorman might 
be quite laudable in a gentleman of high and 
holy motives seeking an end much to be desired. 
Roosevelt in proud consciousness of his own rec- 
titude wondered why his old friends among the 
Independents felt aggrieved. Surely nothing 
could be wrong that would promote so important 
a thing as Theodore Roosevelt's progress to high 
place in the ''governing class." Clearly that was 
the dominant issue. The little subterfuge was 
nothing compared to the good to be accomplished. 
As for the dicta of Roosevelt that he is the most 
unsafe adviser who would suggest the doing of 
evil that good may come of it, well, that applies 
to persons other than Mr. Roosevelt. 

Strangely enough the faithful Riis shakes his 
head somewhat over this episode in Roosevelt's 
career and Friend Francis E. Leupp attempts 
to explain it. Usually Mr. Leupp is keen, but 
for some occult reason he reproduces the follow- 
ing personal letter written to him by Roosevelt 
September 3, as a document going to prove 
Roosevelt's good faith with the Independents. 
We must keep in mind that this letter was written 
after negotiations with the Independents had been 
practically completed, and a week before the 
statement of Col. Joyce which Roosevelt was 
specifically questioned about and the authen- 



no Roosevelt and the Republic 

ticity of which he denied. Here is the letter 
which everybody will find worth reading: 

Roosevelt remarks that he would rather have 
led the Rough Riders in Cuba than to be gov- 
ernor of New York "three times over." Then 
he continues: — 

*'In the next place, while on the whole I should 
like the office of governor and would not shirk 
it, the position will be one of such extreme dif- 
ficulty, and I shall have to offend so many good 
friends of mine, that I should breathe a sigh of 
relief were it not offered me. 

"It is a party position. I should be one of the 
big party leaders if I should take it. That means 
that I should have to treat with and ivork with 
the organization and I should see and consult the 
leaders, not once, hut continuously, and earnestly 
try to come to an agreement on all important 
questions with them; and, of course, the mere 
fact of my doing so would alienate many of my 
friends, whose friendship I value. 

"On the other hand, when we come to the 
Canal or Life insurance, or anything touching 
the Eighth commandment, and general decency, 
I could not allow any consideration of party to 
come in. And this would alienate those who, if 
not friends, were supporters. 

"As for taking the honor without conditions 
or not at all, I do not believe anybody would as 
much as propose conditions to me. Certainly I 
would not entertain any conditions save those 
outlined in this very letter — that while a good 
partisan, who would honestly strive to keep in 
with the leaders of the party organization, and 



Roosevelt and the Republic hi 

work with them and to bring the Republican 
party into better shape for two years hence, yet 
in the last resort, I would have to be my own 
master, and when questions of honesty or dis- 
honesty arose, I should have to pay no further 
heed to party lines. 

"Now, as I say, I haven't an idea about the 
nomination. I know that some of the politicians, 
some for good, and some doubtless for less good 
or wholly bad reasons, are working for me, and 
that there are some, I may add, / am glad to say, 
the worst, are working against me. I should say 
the odds are against my nomination^ but I can 
also say with all sincerity that I do not care in 
the least." 

This letter, it must be remembered, was written 
to a newspaper man, not, it is presumed, for pub- 
lication, but to give the man a "line" on what to 
say about the situation of his own accord. This 
is one method by which skilled politicians com- 
municate to the public in advance tentative posi- 
tions upon this and that matter in order to get 
a public expression of opinion before committing 
themselves. To the public, he must continue yet 
a while the St. George of the Independents slay- 
ing the Piatt dragon. 

It is safe to say that had this letter been 
addressed to Messrs. Cutting and Chapman and 
their Independents, Roosevelt would not have 
been asked to accept the Independent nomination. 
Several perplexing questions arise in connection 
with this letter when we remember that it was 
written nearly three zveeks before Roosevelt felt 
that he could afford to break openly with the In- 



112 Roosevelt and the Republic 

dependents. If it would be a relief to Roosevelt 
not to be offered the governorship, why did he 
scheme for it? If he regarded it September 3 
as a party position why did he have anything to 
do with the Independents whose excuse for exist- 
ence was the view that it was not a party posi- 
tion? If he intended from the first to be a 
"good partisan" and to treat with the organisa- 
tion leaders (Piatt and Odell) in everything, why 
did he bargain with the Independents the very 
kernel of whose proposition was that he should 
go in as a governor zvholly independent of Piatt 
and Odell and pledged to overthrow them and 
their policies? As to conditions, what conditions 
could Piatt or any other boss want except those 
named in the Leupp letter? 

Roosevelt, it must be remembered, promised 
to accept the Independent nomination, coupling 
therewith but one condition — that unless he 
should receive the Republican nomination also, 
he should have the privilege of withdrawing en- 
tirely from the race. If the regular nomination 
came to Roosevelt, he was hound to accept it 
upon the terms of the Independents, and to ac- 
cept also the nomination of the Independents. 

Questions of good faith in this transaction 
must be settled by each reader according to his 
notion of what constitutes good faith in politics. 
But nobody will question that the incident marked 
Theodore Roosevelt again as a partisan before 
all things, ready to sacrifice everything except 
personal advancement, to the call of party 
exigencies. The incident was reminiscent of 
the Blaine incident of 1884, the railway rate 



Roosevelt and the Republic 113 

incident of 1906, and scores of lesser like inci- 
dents between them. When cornered, or pos- 
sessed by a strong desire for mounting poli- 
tically, a desire ever present, Roosevelt has 
never proved choice in political methods or 
political associates. Good Historian Lodge 
might characterise the Rooseveltian political 
methods as Jesuitical. Sometimes Roosevelt, 
for purposes best known to himself, has used 
the mask of independence, but the partisan is 
not so deeply concealed as is the Tartar in the 
Russian. 

The letter, too, sets forth an interesting view 
of public office, even the place of governor. *Tt 
is a partisan position." Should administer it as 
*'a good partisan." I shall be governor of the 
Republican party, for the Republican party and 
by the Republican party. If partisan interests 
do not interfere, I shall look after the interests 
of all the people of the State. 

Thus joyfully did Roosevelt enroll himself 
under the Piatt and Odell banner in preference to 
the banner of independence, for he knew that 
banner was far more likely to lead to the heights. 
Now was Theodore Roosevelt on the high road 
to eminent place among the "governing class," 
and assiduously did he pursue his journey. 
Rough Riders had disbanded, but they still had 
the broad hats cocked with a rakish turn, and 
their brown uniforms which with their war 
thunder had made the very Cuban mountains 
tremble. Roosevelt knew well how to use 
them as political assets. 

Immediately was organized a flying squadron 



114 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of Rough Riders mounted upon special trains. 
The Cuban war was re fought upon many a glor- 
ious, though bloodless field. Conditions were 
far more favorable. Roosevelt and his command 
struggled in the red jungle at Las Guasimas, 
or scaled the bloody heights of San Juan for the 
edification of multitudinous rural patriots at 
country fairs. Again the bugle sounded "to the 
charge." Drums crashed, guns thundered, and 
the gallant fellows rushed the seething trenches. 
There were deafening cheers for victory and the 
hand-clappings were like the voice of the gatlings. 

What had all this to do with canals, civil ser- 
vice, taxation, tenements and numerous other 
issues to confront the next governor of New 
York ? Bless your simplicity, nothing at all ! 
It was not supposed to have. In the light of 
Black's administration, the less said about state 
matters the better. These were dry, irksome 
and dangerous things to talk about. War stories 
never fail to interest, or war costumes to inspire. 
Our hairy ancestor of the stone age is not far 
concealed in the best of us. 

Born showman, master of impressive stage 
business in politics, Roosevelt knew well the 
power of the campaign he was conducting. This 
knowledge gave him the governorship of New 
York, for with all his glitter, with the prestige of 
San Juan still upon him, with the weakness of 
his opponents promoting his campaign, Roose- 
velt slipped in by but a few paltry thousands 
in a vote of nearly a million and one-half. His 
plurality amounted to about one-seventieth of 
those voting at the election. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 115 

In the serene recess of his private apartments, 
away from critical eyes, Roosevelt must have had 
some moments of delicious entertainment over 
the grim humor of making a man governor be- 
cause of his rakish hat and his war stories. Im- 
possible! Well, if Roosevelt did not smile over 
it, the fact is proof positive that something akin 
to egoism must have ruthlessly crushed out a 
puny sense of humor. 

Roosevelt had won. New York voters, like 
their brothers elsewhere, careless of nice dis- 
tinctions, thought he had won as an independent. 
His partisan declarations were ^oon forgotten. 
Governor Roosevelt could have the hearty sup- 
port of the great voting and working masses of 
his state, regardless of party. Never had gov- 
ernor taken a popular commission under out- 
wardly more favorable auspices. New York was 
ready to believe in him. Of him it expected 
much. 

Keen newspaper thrusts perforated the tough 
hide of the wily old political were-wolf, 
Thomas C. Piatt. Now, at last, v^as he to suf- 
fer a Greenland of cold isolation. 

Roosevelt started out bravely, but clamorously. 
A great noise had intervened between election 
and the oath of office. It was the thunderous 
pronunciamentos of great events to come. Leg- 
islative members assembled expectant. Roose- ' 
velt transmitted his first state paper. New 
Yorkers blinked, rubbed their eyes and blinked 
again. Had they after all elected Roosevelt 
president or had New York overnight become j 
an independent nation? ' 



ii6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

The message congratulated the PEC)PLE OF 
NEW YORK on carrying to a successful con- 
clusion **one of the most righteous wars of mod- 
ern times." Humanity and national honor de- 
manded that we drive Spain from the Western 
hemisphere. Preachment followed preachment, 
with war as the moving text. Militia should be 
kept for home duty and regulars sent out to con- 
quer and garrison foreign lands. Arms should 
be of the latest pattern. A regiment with Krag- 
Jorgensens (Rough Riders) was worth three 
with Springfields and black powder. Artillery 
with black powder sufifered in Cuba. Moral — • 
color your powder brown. Shotguns were best 
in a riot. (Here the problem is to commit max- 
imum slaughter among unarmed working men at 
short range.) As for the naval militia, the pet 
aversion of Roosevelt the naval historian, they 
did their work in fine style in the Spanish war. 

All this and more said the war-obsessed gov- 
ernor in his message. In fact five pages in nine- 
teen were devoted to war and military matters, 
largely lugged in bodily by the ears. Possibly 
in the light of this message, Roosevelt's rough 
riding campaign for governor was sincere. 
Roosevelt might have imagined himself running 
for president on the issue of building up a great 
war empire. At all events his first message as 
governor was distressingly warlike. 

Commonplace was the rule of the remaining 
pages. A Delphic preachment such as Theodore 
Roosevelt was famous for before the days of 
his infallibility, told the legislature that too much 
property should not be exempt from taxation. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 117 

nor yet should it be taxed so high as to drive it 
out of the state. Roosevelt worked in his per- 
ennial favorite about shackling force and 
shackling cunning. After these ornamental phi- 
losophic declarations, he made some excellent 
recommendations adopted from the labor unions, 
as to factory, tenement and sweatshop regula- 
tions. At the end he told about the evil of too 
many laws and recommended biennial legisla- ^ 
tive sessions and rigid economy. Curiously 1 
enough his administration proved the most ex- 
pensive the state had had for years, with a 
single exception, and the laws of it filled two fat 
volumes each year, where up to that time one 
had sufficed. 

It was an interesting session. The civil ser- 
vice law passed by the Democrats in 1883 and 
scuttled by Black, was re-enacted and extended. 
For some reasons not entirely clear, Roosevelt j 
refused to extend the law to election inspectors, j 
But the law itself was excellent. 

As the session waned, Roosevelt barkened 
more and more to the voice of Piatt. More and 
more did the Plattite courage rise. Aldrich and 
his friends had turned the canal into an asset of 
the up-state machine. It smelled to heaven. 
Every hungry political buzzard moistened his 
beak in the carrion. Investigation had been going 
on — aimless, pointless investigation. Piatt 
smiled cynically. He did not see the use. It 
was useless to try to keep the semblance of 
cleanliness with fingers graft-reeking. Wiser 
than Piatt, Roosevelt saw the need. He knew 
better the force of public opinion and the means 



ii8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of directing it. For a whole year the legislature 
had been preparing the whitewash. It must be 
applied skillfully. If the legislature would not 
appropriate money for completing the investiga- 
tion, he would raise a fund himself. The legis- 
lature appropriated. 

in order to permit no questioning of good 
faith, Roosevelt commissioned two Democratic 
lawyers, Austin G. Fox and Wallace McFarlane, 
to go through the testimony of the investigating 
committee and find the Senagambian in the puzzle 
picture. It was all done with proper trumpet 
blast and drum-beat. His feline majesty of the 
United States Senate laughed again. 

Through the long summer the Democratic 
lawyers toiled through the mass of evidence col- 
lected by the investigating committee. They re- 
ported to Governor Roosevelt. Theirs was a 
Scotch verdict. Rottenness had been found. 
Canal affairs reeked with it, but Campbell W. 
Adams, engineer, and Geo. W. Aldrich, superin- 
tendent, had been given immunity in advance 
by the absolute discretion vested in them by the 
legislature. Motives might be difficult to prove. 
For technical reasons well known to the legal 
profession, the lawyers could not recommend a 
prosecution. 

Roosevelt interpreted the report as favorable 
as possible to the canal looters. With deft touch 
he applied the whitewash brush where it would 
do the most good. There had been no fraud- 
ulent collusion. A little mismanagement, but 
nothing really wrong. 

This whole episode Is prophetic of the Judson- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 119 

Harmon-Sante Fe episode of presidential years, 
and of the Judge Calhoun- Venezuela episode. In 
all three cases investigations noisily heralded and 
bravely started, fizzled out. Roosevelt learned 
something from the event of the canal. Here 
he gave out the report of the lawyers, and news- 
papers very awkwardly pointed out that Gov- 
ernor Roosevelt's conclusions of no wrong were 
not at all warranted by the lawyers' report. In 
the Santa Fe and the Venezuela cases the report 
was just forgotten. 

Another very similar situation presented itself 
a year later. We cannot present it better than 
in extracts from a recent account of the incident 
written by Charles Edward Russell. After de- 
tailing how cleverly the State Trust Company 
had been built up as a portly and plethoric finan- 
cial institution, and how the state bank examiner 
had found it good — in a wonderfully happy and 
prosperous condition, Mr. Russell says: 

''Suddenly in the midst of this fair day and 
cloudless sky, a bolt fell. On January 11, 1900, 
Mr. Kling presented' to the Governor of New 
York a long communication in which he made 
specific and very grave charges against the 
management of the State Trust Company, and 
petitioned the appointment of a commission to 
investigate the company's affairs. . . . These 
charges, if true, were enough to send the whole 
board of directors to the penitentiary for long 
terms. . . . 

*'The governor was much stirred by the 
revelations it contained. He declared at once 
that he must know the facts and all of them, and 



120 Roosevelt and the Republic 

to that end he appointed as special commissioner 
to investigate the company, former Adjutant 
General Avery D. Andrews, of New York City. 
General Andrews had been a member of the 
Police Board under the Strong administration. 
. . . In more recent times he became one of 
the directing spirits of the Asphalt Trust. . . . 
His instructions in the State Trust matter were 
to 'go to the bottom of it no matter whom it 
might affect.' 

*'Now the State Trust matter properly belonged 
to the official care of H. P. Kilburn, who was 
then superintendent of the State Banking De- 
partment. For some reason not officially dis- 
closed, the governor totally ignored Mr. Kil- 
burn Whereupon Mr. Kilburn started 

an investigation of his own. . . . New York 
newspapers, taking the scent, conducted the third. 

"General Andrews finished first. His appoint- 
ment was telegraphed to him on the 12th, and 
he began work on the 13th. His investigation 
lasted something less than five hours. Then he 
ceased his labors and returned two documents. 
One was a report on what he had found and 
the other a personal letter asking to be relieved 
from further research in the matter. . . . 
. . . *'Gen. Andrews was relieved according 
to his request ; no one was appointed in his place ; 
his report was locked up in Albany; and Super- 
intendent Kilburn's report coming in shortly af- 
terward, that, too, was consigned to oblivion. 
In spite of all demands, the government refused 
to make either public, to give any idea of the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 121 

contents of either, or to take any action on 
either. . . . 

**In New York City the district attorney and 
at Albany the attorney-general declined to act. 
A committee of the State Assembly was induced 
to demand a copy of the Kilburn report, but by 
the time it was produced, the committee had 
voted 6 to 5 to return it with seals un- 
broken. . . . 

On March 12 the New York World managed 
to secure in some surreptitious way a copy of 
the Kilburn report (so sedulously suppressed 
at Albany), and published it practically in full. 
The country gasped at the official confirmation 
it contained of the worst charges made by Kling 
or hinted by the newspapers. There seemed no 
longer a chance to doubt that the official investi- 
gation had been muzzled because of the promin- 
ence of the persons /involved, who now stood 
forth in the white light, painfully conspicuous. 
They were: — 

*'Elihu Root, then Secretary of War, now Sec* 
retary of State, a director in the State Trust 
Company, long the personal and confidential ad- 
viser of Mr. Whitney and Mr. Ryan. 

''John W. Griggs, then Attorney General of 
the United States. 

"Thomas F. Ryan. 

"William C Whitney. 

"P. A. B. Widener. 

"R. A. C. Smith. 

"Anthony N. Brady." 

Mr. Russell goes on to give the details of the 
rotten transaction, with its illegal loans to dum- 



12^ Roosevelt and the Republic 

mies, politicians and directors. Lou F. Payn, in- 
surance commissioner, was one of the men to 
profit by the crookedness to the extent of more 
than $400,000. EHhu Root negotiated a loan to 
the dummy office boy. 

Roosevelt was learning. No awkward tales 
of "indiscretions" should come from him officially 
involving personal and political friends. It was 
as important then to protect Elihu Root, the 
Union League reformer and patriot, as it was 
afterward to protect Paul Morton or Francis B. 
Loomis. 

Roosevelt, as soon as he started the canal in- 
vestigation upon its way, plastered a counter- 
irritant upon the devoted back of New York 
City in the shape of a new investigation. Legis- 
lator Mazet was placed in charge. Roosevelt 
would give the city troubles of its own. It 
would have less time to talk about canal affairs 
or trust companies. 

A tax crusade, too, was on the boards. Tax 
sharps of New York City and their friends 
suggested a franchise tax. It was embodied in 
a measure offered by Senator Ford and taken 
up by Roosevelt. At first Roosevelt wanted a 
commission to report a measure for next year, 
but he changed and became most urgent for 
immediate action. There was much dramatic 
business. At the eleventh hour a measure was 
rushed through. It proved defective. Corpora- 
tions considered it crude and unworkable. Pos- 
sibly it was too drastic. At all events it re- 
quired an extra session to get the law into form. 
In the light of what it has accomplished, the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 123 

measure was mild as a reform. Still it was a 
real reform measure in the right direction. The 
measure has added six per cent, or more to the 
taxable valuation of New York State. It has 
restored to the people a small portion of their 
substance, taken from them through franchise 
gifts. Without Roosevelt's advocacy such a 
measure would not have passed at the time. Of 
course, he did not originate the proposition, and 
had he never become governor, it is likely the 
agitation for franchise tax in New York would 
have resulted in legislation. 

As the session waned, a very torrent of special 
messages was poured from the executive man- 
sion into the legislative chambers. Canals, rapid 
transit, Rochester schools and many other things 
came in for such attention. Sixty millions were 
wanted to finish the canals. Everything of con- 
sequence before the legislature was declared an 
emergency measure. The one thing desired 
seemed getting more laws upon the statute books 
although Roosevelt in his message declared 
against this very thing. Dazed legislators de- 
cided that nothing was pressing. So far was 
the emergency plan followed that a purely local 
school matter was made the subject of a special 
message. 

In one of these communications to the legisla- 
ture, Roosevelt took occasion to work in a senti- 
ment dear to his heart. "I have not the slightest 
sympathy," he said, "with the outcry against 
corporations as such or against prosperous busi- 
ness men." The sentiment was unimpeachable, 
but the solons were puzzled in applying it. Out- 



124 Roo^eVelt and the Rei>ublic 

cry had been directed against corporation crook- 
edness and business greed, not against "corpor- 
ations as such or prosperous business men." 
Roosevelt had not told them how to manage 
this particular outcry. 

True to his programme outlined in the Leupp 
letter, of being in the governor's chair "a good 
partisan," Roosevelt consulted Piatt on all mat- 
ters. Benjamin Odell, then Piatt's political 
lieutenant, Mr. Roosevelt afterward characterized 
as : "My trusted helper and adviser in every 
crisis." One of New York's most notorious ma- 
chine politicians, Lou Payn, as insurance com- 
missioner, watched over the interests of widows 
and orphans. His appointment and retention 
was one of the most flagrant of the many scan- 
dals of Governor Black's administration. Even 
had Black been re-elected, he could not have 
retained Payn. 

Nobody knew this better than Senator Thomas 
C. Piatt. But Piatt must make a brave bluff 
at protecting his own. With noisy defiance 
Roosevelt refused Piatt's request. Payn must 

go. 

Roosevelt went from Albany and Piatt from 
Washington to a conference in New York City. 
There was a tremendous battle with much news- 
paper detonation and black smoke. Roosevelt 
gained what everybody knew from the first he 
must gain. After valiant combat Piatt yielded 
what he knew from the first he must yield. 
Payn went. Piatt dictated his successor. There 
was no investigation of the Insurance Depart- 
ment. Insurance grafting became less notorious. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 125 

but continued quite as extensive as before It 
remained for Thomas W. Lawson and Charles E. 
Hughes nearly to accomplish several years after- 
ward what Roosevelt neglected to undertake. 

One finds some difficulty in determining why 
such a courageous man as Governor Roosevelt 
should have permitted Lou Payn to leave the 
Insurance Department red-handed and un- 
scathed. Why was the way left open for addi- 
tional years of insurance misdoing? At all 
events, this was one of Roosevelt's great con- 
spicuous failures as governor, for it left him 
wallowing impotently in the Piatt mire for the 
rest of his term. 

Roosevelt had attempted the impossible. Poli- 
tical cleanliness and the rule of a corrupt poli- 
tical machine can no more be harmonized than 
the rule of Michael and Satan. Roosevelt at- 
tempted to compromise with evil. Faust-Hke he 
made his bargain with the devil of politics on 
that September Sunday when cheek-by-jowl with 
Piatt he decided to jilt the Independents. With- 
out Roosevelt realizing it, the unclean beast of 
politics had placed its mark upon him. How- 
ever cunningly it may thereafter be concealed, 
Piatt knew where to find it. It marked Roose- 
velt as Piatt's own ; made it certain that he must 
somehow pay the price of the favors he had 
received. Political bosses, like Goethe's devil, 
are egoists. 

Summer came and went. In the mellow au- 
tumn Roosevelt talked much. His policies were 
varied and multitudinous and the good governor 
delighted to tell about them. When the time for 



126 Roosevelt and the Republic 

the next leg-islatlve session arrived, Roosevelt was 
in fine fettle for the fray. 

There had been talk of Roosevelt for the 
vice-presidency, but the good governor had em- 
barked upon a scheme for making a paradise, 
politically, of the Empire State. Roosevelt con- 
sulted Piatt and Odell, each making a special trip 
to New York City for the purpose. As a result 
Roosevelt gave out a statement that : — 

"Under no circumstances could I, or would I, 
accept the nomination for the vice-presidency." 
Roosevelt added : "I am happy to state that Sen- 
ator Piatt cordially acquiesces in my views in the 
matter." 

This must have been highly flattering to his 
feline majesty of the United States Senate. 
Whether it was as flattering to Governor Roose- 
velt's self-respect and independence of character 
may be judged each one for himself. The dis- 
gusted ''Nation" explained later that Piatt had 
discovered Roosevelt's secret ambition to be presi- 
dent, and with that magic ring he could imme- 
diately bring the Rough Riding genie to heel: — • 

"Here am I, master; what will you." 

Roosevelt went on to explain that great prob- 
lems had been met and partially solved. He 
wanted to complete his work. He must not be 
interrupted in producing that political paradise. 
Open avowal of Piatt domination did not augur 
well for the solution of Empire State problems, 
yet Roosevelt faced them in 1900 as clamorously 
assertive as before. 

Very moderate, indeed, is the roster of good 
legislation accomplished during Roosevelt's sec- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 127 

end year as governor. Some progress v^as made 
in dealing with labor problems and with tene- 
ment conditions. On the other side of the bal- 
ance sheet were the rapid transit measure and 
the measure dealing with the creation of a metro- 
politan election district. Both amended earlier 
laws and in both cases the laws were made more 
rather than less dangerous. 

Under the rapid transit act was carried to a 
successful issue the absorption by the Ryans, 
Whitney s, Bradys and the Elkins of franchises 
of untold value belonging to the people of New 
York. It meant literally loss to the Metropolis 
of hundreds of millions of dollars. Roosevelt 
advocated this law in an insistently importunate 
special message. Corruptly? Not at all. Roose- 
velt has irreproachable money integrity. The 
special student of political science and the life- 
time office-holder and politician, merely acted 
ignorantly, not knowing what he did. Roosevelt 
himself charitably says that an official fool is 
as bad as or worse than an official knave. Pos- 
sibly his actions confirm his words. 

Roosevelt's connection with the Metropolitan 
election district -superintendent bill will not bear 
the same explanation. This was a move on the 
part of the up-state machine to capture New 
York City. Since their opponents had the votes, 
the only chance of success was by controlling 
election machinery. It was a state "force" bill 
applied to Greater New York. 

One with democratic prejudices might imagine 
this a peculiarly iniquitous measure, violating as 
it did every principle of local self-government 



128 !R00SEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 

But, of course, the high motive left this objection 
not of the weight of a feather. New York 
City's elections were to be taken out of the hands 
of New York's voters and turned over to an 
up-state partisan political dictator with an army 
of "inspectors" to carry out his will. Governor 
Roosevelt and his partisans extended the power 
of this election superintendent so as to include 
the New York police. No other portion of the 
state was subjected to such a law, thus demon- 
strating its partisan purpose. Why New York 
did not rise in open revolt against such iniquity 
is not so clear. It seems not to have accom- 
plished the desired '*up-state" domination. There 
was, as in all cases of this sort, a pious excuse, 
the preventing of election frauds. Curiously 
enough the method adopted had it become ef- 
fective in practice, would have weakened the re- 
sponsibility of voters and made clean elections 
finally impossible. 

Roosevelt's success on the whole as governor 
of New York was extremely moderate. The 
New York Nation, which was almost enthusiastic 
over Roosevelt's election to the governorship, 
had some caustic things to say after the governor 
had been elected vice-president. 

'Tor six months," said the Nation, "he has 
been out of the State most of the time, and the 
State has been out of his mind all of the time." 
When asked to co-operate in some work as gov- 
ernor, Roosevelt remarked: "Don't come to me. 
My work is done." 

"An illusion about Roosevelt," said the Nation 
January 3, 1901, "is that he is fond of work. 



I 



Roosevelt and the Republic 129 

Really he is fond of excitement. . . . It is 
the clamorous life that appeals to him." The 
Nation goes on to remark that Roosevelt would 
be glad to do great things if he could have a 
series of moving pictures to show him in the 
act. 

"It is notorious," continues the ill-tempered 
journal, "that no governor of recent years has 
been so ignorant of the actual business of the 
State." As a result institutions suffered. The 
Nation found that politicians regarded Roosevelt 
as an "easy mark." He was impressed with 
vociferated logic. "Boss Piatt found out Roose- 
velt's secret and played upon it to the discom- 
fiture of his hopes and plans. Ambition, with a 
dread of breaking with his party machine was 
the magic ring which Piatt discovered. New 
York's good governor was irreverently referred 
to as "Theodore the Sudden." He is further 
pictured in this wise: 

"A restlessness of temperament almost patho- 
logical, love of excitement, a fatal fondness for 
haranguing the public, brilliant and dashing 
personal qualities, these characteristics are showy 
and win for their possessor troops of friends; 
but do they make the strong and efficient public 
servant ? 

"Bagehot said of Bolingbroke: 

"We see in Bolingbroke's case that a life of 
great excitement is incompatible with the calm 
circumspection and sound estimate of probability 
essential to great affairs, that though the excited 
hero may perceive distant things, which others 
overlook, h^ will overlook near things which 



130 Roosevelt and the Republic 

others see; that though he may be stimulated to 
great speeches v/hich others could not make, he 
will also be irritated to petty speeches which 
others would not; that he will attract enmities 
but not confidence ; that he will not observe how 
true and plain are the alternatives of common 
business and how little even genius can enlarge 
them ; that his prosperity will be a wild dream 
of unattainable possibilities, and his adversity a 
long regret that those possibilities have departed." 

Lincoln Steffens, who in McClure's for June, 
1900, writes most flatteringly of Roosevelt, said: 

''There were no great pieces of legislation up 
to attract public enthusiasm and help the gov- 
ernor carry his will over the machine's. Neither 
was there any important executive act to give his 
position the force of public feeling." Steffens 
considers Roosevelt up to that time an experi- 
ment. Roosevelt says that at that time his work 
as governor "was done." This is the fact. 

The New York Tribune of February 13, 1900, 
commenting upon Roosevelt's announcement of 
the previous day that he would not accept the 
vice-presidency, but would continue to give his 
energies as governor to problems "which were 
partly solved," remarks : 

"It must be acknowledged that less has been 
actually accomplished thus far under his admin- 
istration than prevalent estimate of his char- 
^acter and talents had led the people to expect. 
He would probably say that this was his misfor- 
tune, but there are many good citizens who think 
that it is partly his fault. He has never seemed 
to them to take full advantage of the fact that 



Roosevelt and the Republic 131 

the machine did not dare nominate anybody else,- 
and that he virtually elected himself. 

''His position at the beginning of his term was 
exceedingly strong, and he might have made it 
impregnable. Doubtless he has meant to do so, 
but he has not succeeded. He has rendered 
himself liable to attacks which will not be the 
easiest thing in the world to repel, and is now 
forced to admit that he needs another term to 
finish the work which his own indiscretions have 
made unnecessarily difficult. ... In case his 
desire for re-election is gratified, we shall hope 
to see him grow to the full stature befitting a 
great offi e." 

Certai' • the Tribune was a friendly critic, 
and nob doubts the justice of its criticism. 

Probabij' . ^ vitriolic comment of the Nation 
was fully warranted. Roosevelt as governor 
was a disappointment to his most devoted ad- 
mirers. To his opponents, he was a distinct 
failure. Odell, Piatt's lieutenant, when finally 
made governor, far outdid Roosevelt in per- 
sonal independence of Piatt control. 

Considering the way in which Roosevelt was 
already enmeshed in the Piatt net, and the keen- 
ness of his ambition for presidential honors, it is 
probably fortunate for Roosevelt's fame that he 
was not accorded an additional term as governor. 



132 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MENACED BY THE VICE-PRESIDENCY. 

Scarcely had Roosevelt disposed of the legisla- 
ture of 1900 when he was confronted with the 
menace of the vice-presidency. Roosevelt was 
generally understood to have considered the 
presidency as the ultimate goal of his ambition. 
He had been mentioned here and there for first 
honors. Even so, it was more than doubtful 
whether his hour had struck. 

William McKinley had been a popular presi- 
dent, and the usual thing would be to give him a 
re-nomination. But one danger confronted 
President McKinley. As a rank outsider, Hanna 
had plunged in four years before and had made 
a president, before the men of Congress had 
awakened to what was being done. Suave, 
astute and winning as he was, McKinley did all 
he could to soften the resentment which rankled 
in congressional, especially senatorial bosoms. 
He had succeeded to a degree. But the inner 
Senate circle yet felt that Hanna should be dis- 
ciplined. 

Hanna did not want Roosevelt for vice-presi- 
dent. Jhat was a good reason why the senatorial 
circle did. Hanna distrusted "the impetuous 
young man who wanted to reform everything 



Roosevelt and the "Republic 133 

in a day." Senators Thomas C. Piatt and Mat- 
thew Stanley Quay knew the young man better. 
Hanna suspected Roosevelt of having his eye 
on the presidency, and was not so certain about 
Rooseveltian patience. Suppose Roosevelt should 
get into the convention and decide that then was 
the appointed time? Roosevelt's friends all over 
the country were paying altogether too much at- 
tention to this Rough Rider business. It worried 
Hanna. He found no pleasure in keeping track 
of an ambitious young politician who had as a 
political asset a perennial circus parade. 

Quay, Piatt and their friends knew Hanna's 
fears and they demanded that Roosevelt should 
be the nominee for the vice-presidency. They 
had reasons beside Hanna hostility. Piatt had 
done very well with Roosevelt thus far, but he 
was too uncertain a quantity for a comfortable 
executive in the domain of the ''easy boss." It 
would please his feline majesty well to maroon 
Roosevelt for four years in the vice-presidential 
chair. At the end of that time Roosevelt would 
be pretty thoroughly tamed. 

Consciously or unconsciously, Roosevelt 
lent himself to the plans of Piatt and Quay. 
He had himself made a delegate to the con- 
vention. Coming there in Rough Rider hat 
and the rakish dash and swagger of the regi- 
ment, so well advertised a man as he, naturally- 
attracted attention. Roosevelt did not "shirk 
it." Such dramatic situations are a trifle dan- 
gerous to settled programmes when the hero 
knows his metier and the audience is im- 
pressionable. 



134 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Secretary of the Navy John D. Long and 
Jonathan P. Dolliver had been given free entry 
by the machine for vice-presidential honors. 
Either was acceptable to Hanna. Neither was 
ready to yield to the other. Hanna was stub- 
born; Quay immovable. Hanna fumed and 
fretted. Quay worked blithely confident. He 
passed the word among his henchmen and 
sprung a resolution upon the convention to 
reduce Southern representation in future gath- 
erings. There was clamor from Southern dele- 
gates. 

Quay let it be known that his position was 
not irrevocably fixed in favor of the resolution 
at that time. If the delegates would just see 
the supreme merit of Col. Roosevelt, the gal- 
lant Rough Rider, as a vice-presidential can- 
didate, Quay would withdraw his resolution. 

Hanna seethed, but the cool, cynical Quay 
held his ground. He promoted gossip of a 
movement for Roosevelt as a presidential can- 
didate. This was taken up by Roosevelt's 
more ardent friends. The situation was shap- 
ing itself so that a long-continued deadlock 
might prove dangerous to Hanna plans. 
Pennsylvania had spoken. If necessary the 
state of Quay might lead a revolt. 

Up to this time Roosevelt had been coy. He 
did not want the nomination. But he cir- 
culated just the same keeping well toward the 
center of the stage. Hanna surrendered. He 
met with Piatt and Quay and the three sent for 
Roosevelt. Roosevelt gracefully yielded to 
their entreaties. It was an awful sacrifice. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 135 

but — . He would second McKinley's nomin- 
ation and while the ovation was still in prog- 
ress, he would take his place upon the ticket. 

The bargain was made overnight. Next 
morning it was in the newspapers which kept 
close touch with the situation. Roosevelt ap- 
peared according to programme, striding to the 
platform with Rough Rider mien, and the 
ovation followed. His was the speech of the 
day. He found himself on the ballot with Mc- 
Kinley. Quay had won. 

Possibly Roosevelt had also won, for he 
expressed satisfaction as soon as it was settled 
that he should stand for the vice-presidency. 
There will always be room for doubt in the 
minds of outsiders whether Roosevelt was 
dragooned by Piatt and Quay into taking the 
vice-presidential nomination in order to get 
rid of him as governor of New York, or 
whether he skillfully plotted to have it forced 
upon him by circumstances. Either theory 
will harmonize well with surrounding circum- 
stances. Certainly, had Roosevelt remained 
in Albany or at Oyster Bay, Piatt and Quay 
would have had a much more difficult problem 
upon their hands. Probably the fact is that 
Roosevelt even then had in the back of his 
head some budding hope that the presidential 
lightning might strike him then and there, if 
he made himself sufficiently conspicuous at the 
convention. At least the worst that could hap- 
pen, was becoming a vice-presidential candi- 
date, and getting rid once for all of the per- 
plexities of his position as governor, which to 



136 t?.OOSEVELT AND tHE REPUBLId 

put it mildly, had up to that time proved many 
and serious, as his accomplishment was dis- 
appointing. 

Such an attitude would have been quite con- 
sistent with Roosevelt's record as an office- 
holder. He tired of legislative work, as soon 
as he realized the real difficulties of the place. 
No sooner had the civil service place ceased 
to yield excitement than he looked for fields 
less serene. Roosevelt's police commissioner's 
seat got uncomfortably hot and he moved 
on to the navy. Before he had fallen fairly 
into the spirit of his position he was seeking 
honors on the gory field. Soon the toys of 
thie soldier palled and he sought distinction as 
governor. Now he was ready to make another 
change. Roosevelt's history has proved him a 
political climber. Position has been used as a 
stepping stone to higher position, and he re- 
mained upon each step only sufficiently long 
to get a firm foothold for another move up- 
ward. 

To persons who appreciate Roosevelt's mar- 
velous skill as a politician, it must always re- 
main a question whether Piatt and Quay in 
this matter of the vice-presidency made Roose- 
velt their unwilling but lucky victim, or were 
really his unconscious tools. 

As never before in his career, Roosevelt 
now had full opportunity to "harangue the 
multitude" on every topic under the sun. Ac- 
cording to the Nation this meant undiluted 
happiness. President McKinley could not 
make a speaking campaign, Roosevelt was 



Roosevelt And the Republic i^^'j 

made the mouthpiece of the administration. 
Immediately his field of operation became na- 
tion-wide. He dropped his work as governor. 
There was no time for such prosaic business. 
The presidential campaign was on at once. 
First a Rough Riders' meeting in Texas as an 
impressive prelude. Then speech-making tours 
covering most of the country. Crowing over 
the war; justifying our treachery to the Fili- 
pinos ; lauding high tariff ; boasting of cur- 
rency reform and prosperity — these were the 
burdens of his political peans, varied a trifle 
to suit conditions. President McKinley kept 
a dignified silence. Roosevelt talked and 
talked. ,[ 

Campaign exigencies found Roosevelt doing 
some interesting things. As an advertising 
scheme certain New York newspapers viru- 
lently assaulted the *Tce Trust." No doubt 
the trust deserved it all, however mean and 
sordid the motives of the attack. Charges 
against Mayor Van Wyck and District Attor- 
ney Gardiner developed in the course of the 
fight. Roosevelt, who must finally pass in a 
judicial capacity upon the cases of the mayor 
and district attorney, prejudged both in a pub- 
lic interview. It was prophetic of his "unde- 
sirable citizens" declaration in the Idaho 
assassination cases. 

From far South Dakota, Roosevelt issued a 
proclamation as governor of New York, over- 
looking the fact that while in South Dakota 
his gubernatorial powers were in suspense. He 



138 Roosevelt and the Republic 

was never over nice about the legality of his 
actions. 

A conscientious civil service reformer, 
Roosevelt had a good deal to condone in sup- 
porting the McKinley administration. Roose- 
velt ignored the issue. He contented himself 
with making "Apaches and Boxers" of the Fili- 
pinos, and in denouncing as "traitors" all those 
who failed to take his view of imperialistic 
expansion. Of the eighty tribes in the Philip- 
pine Islands, he said, but two opposed their 
subjugation by America. Mr. Roosevelt ne- 
glected to say that these two included prac- 
tically all of the five millions of civilized na- 
tives in the islands. There were good reasons 
for respecting the prejudices of the polygam- 
ous Sultan of Sulu, but the idea of Filipino 
Christians setting up an independent republic 
could in no wise be tolerated. 

Mr. Roosevelt wanted President McKinley, 
and incidentally, Governor Roosevelt, elected 
as an expression of approval of the Philippine 
war. By a lusty carnival of killing, this nation 
must show to the world that it was not a nation 
of hucksters. 

Approval from the voters of the country in- 
dicated that they agreed with him in his posi- 
tion. McKinley and Roosevelt won easily. 
Finally was Theodore Roosevelt to preside 
over the deliberations of the grave and digni- 
fied senators. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 139 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TRAGEDY MAKES ROOSEVELT PRESIDENT. 

Theodore Roosevelt enjoyed to the fullest 
extent the elegant leisure v^hich the vice- 
presidency gave him. Again he turned to liter- 
ature and hunting for outlets for his surplus 
energy. Both gave him occasion for appear- 
ing in print at intervals, lest the people should 
forget. 

So strong was the ardor of the chase upon 
him, that Theodore Roosevelt, after the open- 
ing of the final act in the tragedy which was 
to place William McKinley among our presi- 
dential martyrs, left his chief lingering be- 
tween life and death in Buffalo, and plunged 
into the Adirondack wilderness. There was 
reason to believe that the nation might be left 
without an executive. Informed persons knew 
that the crisis of the wound had not passed. 
Timid persons feared grave complications 
should officers fail to locate the new president 
and place the responsibility of affairs in his 
hands. 

With splendid recklessness, characteristic of 
him in certain matters, Roosevelt did his ut- 
most to cut off all communication between him 
and the outside world. Fate, the thing which 



140 Roosevelt and the Republic 

has fought long and mightily upon his side, 
prevented him from losing himself as utterly 
as he would wish. 

The fact that he had tried, gave his entrance 
upon the last and highest stage of his political 
career, far more dramatic impressiveness than 
it otherwise could have had. When the au- 
dience asks itself: "Can the rescuer arrive in 
time?" and awaits the answer breathlessly, 
they are much more delighted to see him and 
more likely to applaud his effort, than they 
would be had he hung about during the whole 
previous act, awaiting an opportunity to take 
part in the rescuing. President Roosevelt s 
entrance upon the duties of the presidential 
office lacked no element of dramatic force. 

Tragic crime had cut down the man whom 
the great bulk of Americans delighted to honor, 
and whom many of them loved. For the tirne 
the president was a demigod, the presidential 
office a fetish. Naturally the new incumbent 
shared in the veneration. It was a most 
auspicious beginning. With a wonderful sense 
of what was expected of him. President Roose- 
velt announced at the bier of his dead prede- 
cessor, that it would be his ambition and his 
study to carry out the policies of the distin- 
guished public servant who had come to so 
untimely an end. 

This must have been a great sacrifice for 
Theodore Roosevelt. It was not the first time 
he had made such a sacrifice, and it came easier 
to him than it would have come to most per- 
sons with fixed convictions. President Mc'> 



Roosevelt and the Republic 141 

Kinley had been an extreme high-tariff man. 
Roosevelt, once a free trader, had probably al- 
ways leaned toward low tariff. It must have 
irked President Roosevelt greatly to feel bound 
to adopt a tariff policy even more extreme than 
that of President AIcKinley. In his last 
speech, President McKinley had declared for 
reciprocity and broader foreign markets. 
President Roosevelt has not found such a 
policy necessary in practice. 

President McKinley had dealt the merit sys- 
tem of government appointment a staggering 
blow. The New York Nation rightly credited 
him with having given this particular fad the 
worst setback it had encountered in twenty 
years. President Roosevelt, regarded by 
many as the only great and original civil ser- 
vice reformer, possibly accepted this part of 
his predecessor's policy with mental reserva- 
tion. Mental reservation had met all of 
Roosevelt's needs in the case of Blaine. 

Ship subsidies were another legacy left to 
Theodore Roosevelt by his predecessor. He 
has striven faithfully, but thus far unsuccessfully 
to execute this clause in the will of his tes- 
tator. 

Then there was "benevolent assimilation/* 
the "duty and destiny" business which the Mc- 
Kinley administration was carrying out in the 
Philippines through its p'ous and devoted 
missionaries, Gen. "Hell-Roaring Jake" Smith 
and A'lajors Glenn and Waller, of watercure 
and other fame. President Roosevelt took up 
this work with praiseworthy enthusiasm and 



142 Roosevelt and the Republic 

is still carrying it on. To be sure, most of 
the pious mastication was done in the sunshine 
of McKinley benevolence, and the assimilation 
is always a pleasant task. 

Roosevelt was called upon merely to demon- 
strate by the might of many thousands of 
American soldiers that unless a people is ready 
for the most advanced type of Anglo-Saxon, 
"democratic" Republican government, they are 
not fit for self-government at all. Deluded 
mortals have divided into scores of nations, 
each is left alone, governing itself in the way 
that suits it best. But these have missed the 
pious masticators and "benevolent assimila- 
tors" who speak English and rule everybody 
they can overcome in battle — always for the 
benefit of the person governed. To be thus 
neglected in the divine scheme of Anglo-Saxon 
imperialism is the misfortune of many nations. 
Roosevelt, following McKinley, has done his 
best to show these nations that they should 
not try self-government at all until they are 
rather better adapted to it than anybody else. 
If only Roosevelt had a Taft of medicine to 
teach the doctors before beginning practice to 
practice as those other doctors of eminent tal- 
ents and decades of practice ; if Roosevelt 
would only direct Elihu Root to have a law 
that no lawyer should be admitted to the bar 
until he was as efficient in the law as Root 
himself, what a wonderful bar and bench and 
medical profession we would have! If! If! 
There's the rub. These doctors and lawyers 
would be no whit more wonderful than the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 143 

nation which should become proficient In the 
highest form of self-government through being 
governed by an alien race. One doubts whether 
all the rare wisdom and ability of President 
Roosevelt will be equal to the task of accom- 
plishing either miracle. 

Having put down elfectively the "dangerous 
elements" in 1896, and having placed the ban 
of disapproval forever upon "dishonest money," 
''free riot" and a number of other very wicked 
but wholly fictitious bugbears, it was not ne- 
cessary thereafter for the American public to 
worry over any other sort of dishonesty in 
business or government. A group of Wall 
Street financial saints, with the strangest sort 
of perversity, seemed to regard the victory of 
1896 as their own victory. Possibly it was be* 
cause, as the Review of Reviews afterward an* 
nounced, the campaign was financed in Wall 
Street and conducted therefrom. The pious 
honesty and the smug respectability secured by 
the victory was all considered their own, just 
as though they had purchased it with their 
own money as they might have purchased a 
franchise from New York, Chicago or St. 
Louis aldermen. 

The inauguration of the great and good 
McKinley, this Wall Street group took as a 
signal for raising the black flag of financial 
and industrial piracy on every sea, foreign and 
domestic, and such a carnival of loot, public 
and private, as held sway for four or five years 
thereafter, cannot be matched in American 
politics. Grant's second administration would 



144 Roosevelt and the Republic 

serve as a rival, except that the theatre was 
much smaller and the stage setting less im- 
pressive. 

Euphonious and respectable names took the 
ugly edge off these raids. They were "promo- 
tions," ''consolidations," "organizations," "ex- 
pansions" of industry and a thousand and one 
blessed things. Whether it was the looting 
of the Postoffice Department, the purloining of 
-a franchise or a railway or the crucifying of 
an island people fighting for their rights, a 
sanctimonious countenance and a pious phrase 
were always there to justify it by high and 
holy motive. An unsympathetic foreigner 
might have called it the apotheosis of hypoc- 
risy, cant and villainy. But we good Ameri- 
cans must regard it as the time of our deliv- 
erance from uncouth, menacing and entirely 
wicked doctrines. 

Added to this, the Spanish war, like all other 
wars, loosed restraint. Taut moral principles 
snapped like threads. The net of conscientious 
action hung flabbily. A twentieth century 
community was plunged into the stone age of 
elemental consciencelessness and ferocity. Its 
centuries of softening civilization fell from it 
like a cloak. 

Policies which fostered such conditions were 
the policies President Roosevelt pledged him- 
self in Buffalo to carry out. It was not an 
easy task he had set himself. Sorely did he 
need to employ generously the saving mental 
reservation. With Napoleonic stroke the 
country had been divided into industrial prov- 



Roosevelt and the Repitbltc 14^ 

inces, principalities, and empires to be ruled 
over by industrial potentates, who yearned to 
be industrial dictators. The warring interests 
of these must be harmonized. 

President Roosevelt took hold with a vim. 
His mental reservation as to the merit system 
was the first to be put to use. Revenue officers 
at Louisville and El Paso who had become too 
thoroughly inoculated with the laxity of the 
ATcKinley regime in civil service, were brought 
up short. At the same time Roosevelt ap- 
pointed a thoroughly disreputable Pennsyl- 
vania politician, too strong for the McKinley 
stomach, to a responsible consulship in Can- 
ada. As governor Roosevelt had been consid- 
ered "easy" for the politicians. Here was like 
weakness. Was he still to be Piatt and Quay 
ruled? 

McKinley 's taking off and the insane burst 
of vengeful sentiment which it engendered, 
colored Roosevelt's first message. Because a 
poor, deluded wretch had killed a president, 
the spokesmen of our country were ready to 
throw to the winds constitutional safeguards 
fought and striven for since the time of King 
John. President Roosevelt recommended that 
Federal courts should be given power to deal 
with crimes against the person of the Presi- 
dent, or any man in the presidential succession. 
The punishment of an attempt should be com- 
mensurate with the "enormity" of the offense. 

Out of the public clamor that gave rise to 
this recommendation or at least made it op- 
portune, he would fashion a law making crime 



146 Roosevelt and the Republic ' 

against a few Federal officers and foreign dip* 
lomats, different from crimes against American 
citizens. Roosevelt may be given credit for 
trying to embody in law the principle which 
in Germany makes speaking disrespectful of 
the Emperor a greater offense than killing a 
mechanic — if the killing be done by a member 
of the military caste. Our whole national life 
until the administration of President McKinley 
had been a protest against this very thing — 
this giving of greater rights and privileges to 
persons in office than to persons out of office. 
We were getting back to the precious prin- 
ciples of Charles Stuart. 

Our sapient historical statesman explained 
the queer retrogression on the ground that the 
attack upon the officer was an attack upon the 
institution. They had assassins murdering the 
presidency and the chief justiceship, rather 
than merely killing the man who happened at 
the time to fill the position ; although they 
would hardly contend that the street-sweeping 
service was murdered by the violent and 
felonious taking off of Mike Clancy, the street- 
sweeper. Theretofore, whether it was Mike 
Clancy or William McKinley was killed, the 
crime was just murder. Now one must be- 
come regicide, a new crime in the American 
calendar. But we would not call it by that 
name. 

Undesirable and wholly misguided citizens 
contend that both the presidency and the su- 
preme justiceship, as institutions of free people, 
are murdered when their incumbents are made 



Roosevelt and the Republic 147 

a class by themselves in the eye of the criminal 
law. If murder of a president is different from 
the murder of another man, they argue, then 
the murder of any other officer of the govern- 
ment is also different. We have a law for our 
officers and another for ourselves. The thin 
edge of the wedge of caste, class and privilege 
has begun to cleave our constitution. 

Our most useful citizen, it is pointed out, 
may be given protection of the law not equal 
to that given the proxy of a foreign potentate. 
A queer corollary is found in the interesting 
performance of the Joe Murrays of our public 
service censoring the opinions of our distin- 
guished foreigners to determine whether they 
are not too strong for the digestion of the 
feeble American intellect. We have freedom 
of speech in our constitution and laws upon 
the statute books of recent vintage which seek 
to deny freedom of thought. It is the first 
great triumph of the Roosevelt administration, 
giving the government a luff" toward respect- 
ability — the respectability of king, czar and 
emperor. 

At this stage in his career, President Roose- 
velt was a little skeptical about the "trust- 
busting" business. He had not yet recovered 
from the effect of the great victory. "Much 
of the legislation directed at the trusts, he 
said, would have been extremely mischievous 
if it had not been entirely ineffective." Unfor- 
tunately President Roosevelt has left us in the 
dark as to whether this applies to the Sherman 
anti-trust law or to the numerous state laws 



I48 Roosevelt and the Republic ' 

incontinently bowled over by the Federal 
courts. An awkward statute in Illinois, the 
product of sinister Altgeld influences, was de- 
clared unconstitutional because it playfully ex- 
cluded agricultural trusts from the trusts to 
be ''busted," even though there were not then, 
are not now and never shall be, any such com- 
binations. 

''In dealing with business interests," Mr. 
Roosevelt very sagely remarked, "for the gov- 
ernment to undertake by crude and ill-con- 
sidered legislation to do what may turn out to 
be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far- 
reaching disaster that it would be better to do 
nothing at all." 

Still more unfortunately, Roosevelt neglected 
to explain why crude and ill-considered legisla- 
tion usually, as everybody knows, so 
eminently helpful, would not do in this 
case. Nor did he explain why it was neces- 
sary to have the legislation crude and 
ill-considered. But at least he has told us what 
to avoid, a thing no legislator would for a 
moment suspect. The strength of this prop- 
osition is like the strength of so many of 
Roosevelt's political propositions, in its speci- 
ficness and helpfulness. 

In this message, too. President Roosevelt 
initiates as a policy of his administration the 
thing which most sensible and respectable 
people, in addition to all corporate interests, 
have long been clamoring for: 

"Therefore, in the interest of the whole 
people, the nation should without interfering 



Roosevelt and the Republic 149 

with the powers of the states in the matter 
itself, also assume power of supervision and 
regulation over all corporations doing an in- 
terstate business." If the constitution had not 
given power to the general government to 
assume such supervision, Mr. Roosevelt 
wanted the constitution amended to fit the 
case. 

Harassing doubts still perplex our statesmen 
as to how the general government can assume 
such regulation without interfering with the 
power of the states. There are indications 
that up to this time the principal business of 
the general government, through its courts, 
has been making ineffective the attempts of 
states to meet this corporation problem. 
President Roosevelt has not yet seen fit to 
illuminate the dark places in this problem by 
the white light of his statesmanship. There 
are indications that his opinion has been modi- 
fied as to the need of the general government 
interfering with the activity of the states. 

We could not expect, the President said, 
to have the Filipinos learn in a few years what 
required us thirty generations of practice. He 
left us to draw our own conclusion that if we 
were to prepare the Filipinos, we must hold 
them in tutelage for thirty generations. That 
may be putting it mildly, for there is a ques- 
tion whether our leading strings will prove 
as effective a preparation for self-government 
as the hard knocks which a race encounters in 
looking after its own affairs. If it should 
prove as effective this would be the first 



150 Roosevelt and the Republic 



instance where either an individual or a nation 
has developed in any such way. 

In fact in his first message President Roose- 
velt ran the gamut of his policies, except as to 
railway rate regulation. Philippines, Cuban 
reciprocity, Chinese exclusion, big navy, im- 
proved army and all the rest. 

Tariff was treated gingerly, but the state- 
ment in regard to it indicated that Roosevelt 
had finally and for all time washed away the 
taint of free trade heresy. Reciprocity must 
be considered the handmaiden of protection ; 
duties must never fall below the difference be- 
tween labor cost here and in Europe. 

The handmaiden has been since left in lonely 
isolation. Roosevelt evidently believes in a 
generous margin for difference in labor cost. 
Some of Roosevelt's former associates, the 
foolish and impracticable free traders, boldly 
contend that the American laborer does more 
for the money he receives than does any 
European laborer. If Roosevelt's rule was 
put in practice, the tariff tax would be a 
minus quantity upon all competing goods. No- 
body is recorded as having seen President j 
Roosevelt wink when he wrote this recom- ! 
mendation. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 151 



CHAPTER XV. 

RACE PROBLEMS CONFRONT ADMINISTRATION. 

Race problems met President Roosevelt at 
the threshold of his administration. Scarcely- 
had he warmed his White House seat when 
Booker Washington, the negro educator, be- 
came his dinner guest. Floodgates of race 
prejudices were opened and torrents came 
forth. 

President Roosevelt's motives cannot be sus- 
pected. Nobody will deny his right to choose 
his guests. This incident helped in no way 
the solution of the race problem. It hampered 
Roosevelt mightily thereafter in dealing with 
the South. 

Democracy had no part in President Roose- 
velt's decision to make Booker Washington his 
guest. As a matter of fact the invitation was, 
no doubt, extended without taking thought of 
consequences. As President Roosevelt sees it, 
neither negroes nor any other human beings 
take part in government as a right. It is a 
privilege handed down by their betters. This 
creed has been reiterated so often that it is 
unnecessary to refer to specific quotations. 

Holding this notion in common, probably 
drew Roosevelt and Booker Washington to- 



15^ Roosevelt and xhe Republic 

gether. Washington would make his people 
free and self-respecting by "keeping them out 
of politics" and teaching them trades. Roose- 
velt likes that plan. At some future time we 
may have a race of colored people satisfied 
and prosperous as well fed oxen. 

Since the Booker Washington incident, 
President Roosevelt has managed to keep the 
race problem pretty well stirred up, South and 
North. The Indianola post-office incident was 
quite as offensive to Southern people as the 
Booker Washington incident. It also offended 
other persons who believe that in America no 
officer should be forced upon a community 
against its will. As a corollary to the notion 
that participation in politics is a privilege and 
not a right of the citizen, President Roosevelt 
holds that citizens have no right to say who 
shall become their public servants. 

Perversely enough, this Mississippi com- 
munity had a choice as to its postmaster, and 
expressed the choice in a way more forcible 
than diplomatic. Such impudence in the gov- 
erned class must not go unpunished. It was 
the will of the President that these people 
must be served in their postoffice by this par- 
ticular colored woman, well, just because he 
willed it that way. To punish them for setting 
their own puny wishes against his royal will, 
President Roosevelt closed up the postoffice 
and obliged the community to send thirty miles 
for its mail. The community thought that 
action illegal, autocratic, tyrannical, but that 
.was because of excited imagination. It was a 



Roosevelt and the Republic 153 

salutary lesson for the recalcitrant governed 
class. 

Very similar was the Crum case in South 
Carolina. President Roosevelt with nice dis- 
crimination picked a negro for a place in a 
community where he knew it would give a 
maximum of offense. He chose a position 
where negro officiousness would have a par- 
ticularly irritating influence upon white men. 
This negro was the only negro of importance 
to whom President Roosevelt at that time had 
given office in the South. It would have been 
as well to have left the slate white from top to 
bottom. But he wanted to make an instance. 

With the infinite bulldog stubbornness which 
President Roosevelt displays when he knows 
he is wrong, he clung to this appointment. 
Under the constitution, confirmation by the 
Senate is as necessary to make a valid appoint- 
ment, as the nomination by the President. It 
is part of the constitutional process of ap- 
pointment for places requiring Senate confirma- 
tion. When the Senate rejects, a president 
who obeys the constitution nominates another 
man. When the appointee fails of nomination 
and his appointment lapses, it is a violation of 
the constitution and an insult to a co-ordinate 
branch to renew the appointment. But con- 
stitutional provisions do not apply to Presi- 
dent Roosevelt. Any administration news- 
paper will demonstrate that. Some way or 
other this confirmation by the Senate is sup- 
posed to be a mere formality, although the 
.constitution-makers looked upon it as a most 



154 Roosevelt and the Republic 

important thing. Presidents are supposed to 
know personally thirty or forty thousand ap- 
plicants for seven or eight thousand places, or 
to get information about them from politicians 
coming from the locality of the applicant. 
It would be a great crime to let a senator or 
a congressman pass upon the qualification — a 
violation of the president's "prerogative." 
Roosevelt stuck to his "prerogative" and fritted 
away much of the surplus executive force and 
influence in a struggle of which he alone ap- 
preciated the use or meaning. 

On the other side of the account was the dis- 
charge of Brownsville troops. Somebody 
shot up a Texas town. The troops could 
not or would not tell an army investigator the 
details or give the names of the guilty ones. 
Very well, they would talk ! President Roose- 
velt summarily discharged the whole battalion. 
There was no very convincing evidence that 
any person in the battalion had taken part in 
the "shooting up." There was no charge that 
more than an insignificant number took part. 
Peace reigned supreme throughout the land. 
There were plenty of idle officers and any 
amount of time to find the guilty ones. Mili- 
tary procedure had provided orderly methods 
for reaching such results. But President 
Roosevelt decided that the innocent should 
suffer with the guilty. If they could not con- 
vict the real culprits, so much the worse for 
those who had nothing to do with the case. 
Men who had given their lives to the service 
of their country in the ranks of the soldiery 



Roosevelt and the Republic 155 

and had served faithfully and well, were dis- 
missed "without honor" and with a reprimand, 
and their re-enlistment or civil employment by 
the government forbidden. 

When the storm came, President Roosevelt 
found precedent, war precedent. Lincoln was 
the offender. There are some clever military 
lawyers on President Roosevelt's staff. 

In a speech, we think it was at Springfield, 
111., in 1903, President Roosevelt said : ''A man 
who is good enough to shed his blood for his 
country is good enough to be given a square 
deal afterwards. More than that no man is 
entitled to, less than that no man shall have." 
This was before the Brownsville affair. 

*Tn many cases of lynch law which have 
come to my knowledge, the effect has been 
healthy," etc. (Winning of the West, page 
172.) Probably the President made up his 
mind that this was a case for official lynching. 
This is one method of increasing respect for 
law — "orderly liberty," as Roosevelt is dis- 
posed to designate it. 1 

Democrats of the South applauded. The 
bolt had fallen upon a despised race. Such 
democrats make autocracy popular. Negroes, 
however, seem quite unable to forgive Browns- 
ville. They have been the victims of unof- 
ficial lawlessness so long that it frightens them 
to see official lawlessness added thereto. Even 
negroes are capable of learning by experience. 



156 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XVI. 

PRESIDENT TAKES UP REFORM. 

In a half score of the states there was per- 
nicious activity against industrial and trans- 
portation combinations. Ohio, Texas, Illinois, 
Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
Kansas, and other states, populist-tainted, were 
determined to check the carnival of loot. Al- 
ready the great public were showing signs of 
revulsion. 

Sensational papers had flayed the packing in- 
terests, bringing out the same facts that came 
to light years afterward in the Garfield report. 
The investigator failed to ascertain, as Mr. 
Garfield did, that the plethoric millions of the 
Armours and other great packers had been 
garnered from a modest two per cent, profit. 
Their reports did not leave one in perplexing 
doubt as to whether the packers were exploit- 
ers or benefactors in disguise. 

S. R. Van Sant, of Minnesota, then governor 
of the state, inspired, it is said, by powerful 
rival interests, had gone after the Northern 
Securities merger. Washington State was 
also hot upon the trail. After these two com- 
monwealths had prepared public sentiment and 
made absolutely unmistakable the popularity 



RoosEVEiLt And the: Hei^ublIc i^^ 

of such a move, Philander Knox, President 
Roosevelt's attorney general, inherited from 
President McKInley, took up the fight. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt could not afford to embark in 
any plan of this sort without in advance mak- 
ing sure of public approval. 

About the same time he began his assault 
upon the unpopular packing interests. In both 
cases the government won. Just what It won 
might be made plain to a technical lawyer. In 
speaking to the public it is best to say that 
the government won a victory. This victory 
was not intrusive. It did not prevent the 
merger, nor make less the price of beef. In 
fact the merger has been a hard fact in the 
Northwest since those days in 1901 when the 
Hill-Morgan interests gained control of the 
Northern Pacific and the Burlington railways. 
It was as hard a fact after the government vic- 
tory as before. Now it is as hard a fact as it 
was before the government brought its suit. 

Beef prices have been going up to the con- 
sumer and down to the farmer for lo ! these 
many years. They went on as steadily and un- 
interruptedly after Mr. Knox had enjoined them 
as before. Still Mr. Knox's victory was a great 
triumph for the administration. The merger 
decision established a recondite legal theory so 
occult as to divide the experts of the Supreme 
Court, that the holding company way of merg- 
ing railways is an illegal way. Very well, the 
railway people merged In a way not yet de- 
cided Illegal. There are more ways than one 
of "skinning a cat." As to results, the rose is 



i5S Roosevelt and the ^Republic 

just as sweet by any other name, the merger 
just as profitable by any other title or no title 
at all as by the title of the ^'Northern Se- 
curities Company." In the same way the 
"Beef Trust" case established theoretically that 
the labor-shackling injunction may be used to 
threaten the manufacturer. This lesson, no 
doubt, is worth the advanced price paid by the 
public for its meats. 

Postoffice affairs had grown odorously 
rank. Tulloch made definite charges of wrong- 
doing. Roosevelt's postmaster general sneered 
at them. When they could no longer be sup- 
pressed or blinked, their investigation was 
taken up. A few men, mostly small men, suf- 
fered, and sufTered justly. One James N. 
Tyner, bowed down by the infirmities of age, 
acquitted by the courts, was pursued to his 
grave by the implacable vengeance of the 
President. 

There were grave abuses in the PostofiQce 
Department, such as scandalous overpayment 
for mail service, but these were not touched 
at all. On the contrary, the activities of the 
Postoffice Department were turned to the cen- 
soring of literature and the suppression 
through postal discrimination, of publications 
not meeting the approval of Roosevelt's 
bureaucrats. 

The chief instrument of the postal dis- 
closures. Assistant Postmaster General Bris- 
tow, was shunted off to Panama as an easy 
step in the descent to obscurity. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 159 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ROOSEVELT CAPTURES A CANAL SITE. 

Isthmian canal was one of the interesting 
legacies that came to President Roosevelt. 
Secretary of State Hay, also a legacy, had dug 
up, somewhere in the files of his department, 
an obsolete and lapsed treaty manufactured for 
some obscure reason a half-century before and 
known as the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. This 
treaty gave the good Mr. Hay an excuse for 
asking his friend John Bull if he would 
graciously give Uncle Sam permission to dig a 
canal at Uncle Sam's expense in territory 
with which John Bull had no earthly concern, 
provided Uncle Sam would bear the cost of 
maintenance and give John Bull more benefit 
of the canal than Uncle Sam got himself. 

It was really a daring thing for Mr. Hay 
to ask his British friend for such self-sacrifice, 
he who had been so clamorously our friend 
in the Spanish-American war. True, we had 
paid him by our moral support in snuffing out 
the Boer republics. This moral support had 
been extended under President Roosevelt to 
making United States territory a recruiting 
ground for British military trains. The United 
States was then in the same business of de- 



i6o Roosevelt and the Republic 

stroying republics and acquiring territory by 
sword might. By a "gentleman's" understand- 
ing each was to look the other way so as not 
to see things not intended for him. What 
Kitchener was doing with Boer non-com- 
batants might not look well to Americans who 
had found so much that was monstrous in 
Weyler's reconcentration camps. This gov- 
ernment, as any polite gentleman would do, 
engaged to see that its children did not look 
through the cracks in the British fence and 
see the demonstrations. On the other hand, 
the British government was to keep British 
subjects from prying into the actions of Gen. 
Jacob Smith, with the Stygian appellation, or 
of Major Waller or Major Glenn of water 
cure fame. i 

British tories and Mr. Hay had a perfect un- 
derstanding, but it might be well that some 
tangible evidence be given to the world of this 
entente cordiale. What better opportunity? 
Mr. Hay bowed politely to his friend: "Will 
you permit me, my dear." 

John Bull was never known to permit any- 
thing unless there was something in it for 
him. Nothing ever took place in this world 
that this supreme meddler among peoples did 
not consider especially his affair. The less he 
has to do about it, the more, seemingly, he 
wants to say about it. He could not think of 
having his cousin Jonathan build that canal if 
it were not for their great friendship. But 
seeing it was a case of fast friends, if Jonathan 
would only give some concessions about New 



Roosevelt and the Republic 161' 

Foundland fisheries, give John a strip of the 
Alaskan coast, make the canal neutral by sanc- 
tion of the powers, and give foreigners more 
rights than Americans, John might see his way 
clear to do it. Always seeing it's you. 

John Hay, the great diplomat, the wonder- 
ful diplomat,* actually in his (Hay-Paunce- 
fote) treaty got the permission of Great Britain 
to do a thing Great Britain had not the slight- 
est interest in, and which anybody less punctil- 
lious about the feelings of friends, would not 
have asked about at all. As the sequel shows, 
there was not such tenderness about the rights 
of Colombia, but in the language of Kipling, 
''that is another story." 

Some strange acrobatic feats have been per- 
formed in connection with the canal. A mil- 
lion-dollar commission was at first pretty cer- 
tain that Nicaragua was the place to build it. 
Under the persuasion of the highly eloquent 
French owners of the Panama concession and 
a collection of machinery rapidly being trans- 
formed Into Panama junk, it decided later that 
Panama was really the only place. This Pan- 
ama Canal Company had long since given up 
all hope of building the Panama canal. Its 
franchises had lapsed. Tropical rains and 
tropical vegetation were rapidly destroying the 

*We recognize fully the sterling worth 
of John Hay as a man, but In our judgment, 
with the exception of his inslstance upon the 
integrity of China, his diplomacy was a series 
of embarrassing, if not humiliating blunders. 



:62 Roosevelt and the Republic 

appearance of value in the machinery accum- 
ulated and abandoned on the isthmus. When 
America began to talk canal seriously, the 
moribund Panama company showed new signs 
of life. It got a sort of New York transit com- 
pany extension of franchise from some claim- 
ant to authority in Colombia who was willing 
for a price to sell what did not belong to him. 
Then the Panama company came to the United 
States with its shady franchise and its worth- 
less junk. 

"Colombia can eliminate the French com- 
pany at pleasure," said the Reviezv of Reviews 
in April, 1902. *'The alleged extension of fran- 
chises under which the company claims its 
present rights, seems not to have been granted 
in a legal way." That was certainly putting it 
mildly. 

Congress was unanimous for the Nicaragua 
route, and the House passed a measure author- 
izing the President to build a canal through 
Nicaragua. Panama lobbyists had more in- 
fluence with the Senate. President Roosevelt 
became convinced that Panama junk was 
worth $40,000,000. As a football the thing 
was tossed about Congress for a session. A 
villainous lobby swarmed in Washington and 
some of its minions got extremely close to 
some of the departments. Finally that great 
patriot. Senator John C. Spooner of Wiscon- 
sin, found a way out. Congress abdicated and 
left the whole matter in the hands of the presi- 
dent. It was a way easy, as it was cowardly, 
of dodging responsibility. Also an eminently 



Roosevelt and the Republic 163 

effective way of betraying the interests of the 
people of the United States, who commission 
a Congress to look after the important affairs 
of the country, instead of turning them over to 
an executive dictator and his serviceable 
bureaucrats. 

To be sure, the Spooner act attempted to 
limit within very broad bounds the discretion 
of the executive. It provided for a commis- 
sion of seven to look after the details of the 
work. President Roosevelt in this as in other 
cases, did not permit himself to be unduly 
hampered by laws, constitutional or statutory. 
That is one of his great qualities. While he is 
president it is unnecessary for any other au- 
thority to change in any manner the constitu- 
tion or the laws of the country. Executive 
orders are more prompt, more effective and 
more available for putting in force the supreme 
will of the president. 

By the Spooner act the President was 
authorized to buy the assets of the New 
French Panama Canal Company on the isth- 
mus for $40,000,000, and to negotiate with the 
Republic of Colombia for a canal strip at the 
best obtainable terms. Should he fail to make 
terms with Colombia or to get satisfactory 
title from the French Company, he was to con- 
struct the canal at Nicaragua. 

There was opposition to this law in the Sen- 
ate. Morgan of Alabama, stuck to Nicaragua, 
Congress' first love. Panama interests saw to 
it that Morgan left the head of the Senate 
Committee having this business in charge. 



164 Roosevelt and the Republic 

They wanted a clean man, a man fully conver- 
sant with Wall street business ethics — this 
without the least disparagement to the vener- 
able Alabama senator. Senator Marcus A. 
Hanna was selected for the place. Senator 
Hanna gave the Senate the benefit of his dis- 
covery. He had learned upon unimpeachable 
evidence that should the canal be constructed 
at Nicaragua, it would surely be destroyed by 
earthquake. True, Panama made the distance 
to the Pacific hundreds of miles further; its 
belt of calms would make the canal useless 
for all time for sailing vessels ; it had a climate 
which meant liberal death toll and additional 
millions for sanitation, — but we must dodge 
those earthquakes. Mount Pelee and Mar- 
tinique, argued for Hanna. 

"It is natural," said the Review of Reviews 
in February, 1903, ''that there should be strong 
pressure brought to bear on our government 
to conclude any sort of arrangement with 
Colombia by the various interests, legal, jour- 
nalistic and otherwise, that are serving the 
cause of the French Company that expects to 
get $40,000,000 in cash out of the United States 
Treasury to pay for assets of an abandoned 
enterprise and for franchises which on their 
face were non-transferable, and which had ex- 
pired some time ago, although renewed for a 
short term by means that would hardly bear 
investigation. . . . It is a relief to turn 
from the Panama scheme which suggests in- 
finite confusion, if not infinite lobbying and 



Roosevelt and the Republic 165 

corruption," etc. (Commenting on the Te- 
huantepec railway of Mexico.) 

At that time the Review of Reviews con- 
tended that the President could afford to wait 
until a correct solution of the problem could 
be found. "A right solution is far more to be 
desired than a prompt one." 

With the casting out of Senator Morgan and 
the installation of Senator Hanna at the head 
of canal affairs in the Senate, everything began 
to run smoothly for the Panama company. 
Congress, as related above, turned a back- 
somersault following the canal commission. 
Roosevelt wanted to buy the Panama junk. 
Only an arrangement with Colombia stood in 
the Avay of giving the suave French gentle- 
men and their American representatives of the 
"Third House" $40,000,000, good American dol- 
lars, for something of small value to anybody. 
If the United States has realized $5,000,000 
from its Panama purchase there is nothing on 
record to indicate that fact. 

There was a question as to title, and Mr. 
Philander Knox, the astute attorney general, 
decided that the Panama company could give 
good title "to the property of that company" 
upon the isthmus. In other words, it could 
give title to any property to which it might 
have had title. This was Mr. Knox's quaint 
way of putting it. 

Having been given permission by Great 
Britain, Mr. Hay commenced negotiations with 
Colombia for a final arrangement. No great 
difficulty was found in dealing with Mr. Her- 



1 66 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ran. Things Panaman thrived like a green 
bay tree, in the atmosphere of Washington. 
Uncle Sam had lots of money. Colombia was 
to get, $10,000,000 for its right of way. The 
Panama company was to get four times that 
sum for its junk, and no embarrassing scrutiny 
of title or values. 

Just at that time, unfortunately for Colom- 
bia, Panama interests were not so well repre- 
sented in that little state. Finding everything 
so highly satisfactory at Washington, Panama 
interests seem to have neglected the South 
American end. For ten millions of dollars, 
Colombia, as the treaty provided, was to give 
the United States control of a strip of land 
six miles wide from ocean to ocean, except for 
certain purposes. The United States agreed 
to pay a perpetual rental of $250,000 a year. 
There were those who thought the arrange- 
ment over-favorable to Colombia. The Review 
of Reviezvs, certainly not lacking in loyal sup- 
port to the administration, complained in this 
wise: 

"When one protests against this sort of 
thing" (permitting Colombia to have sover- 
eignty over the canal strip) "at Washington, 
one is told rather cynically that we do not 
really mean it, but that this gives us a foot- 
hold, and that once down there at work, we 
shall gradually improve our advantages and 
usurp what we may need." Thus at that time 
we had the honorable intentions of making a 
treatv with Colombia in order to break it. 

Colombia upset all calculations. With crim- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 167 

inal perversity the little state decided that since 
the Panama Canal Company had permitted its 
franchise to lapse, the company had no interest 
in the canal except to dispose of its junk. 
Colombia objected to the Panama Company 
receiving pay for franchises which belonged 
to the Colombian people. If any one was to 
have the big end of the purse so recklessly 
bestowed by the Yankees, Colombia ought to 
have it. Herran's agreement was rejected, and 
Colombia prepared to take steps formally to 
annul the franchises, or rather formally to de- 
clare that they had lapsed. 

According to the Review of Reviews, Francis 
B. Loomis, assistant secretary of state, in a 
''remarkable" address before the Quill Club of 
New York, justifying Roosevelt's coup, de- 
clared that Colombia's motive in rejecting the 
Hay-Herran treaty was ''to gain time in order 
to nullify the French franchise, appropriate 
the assets of the company, and sell the canal 
on its own account to the United States." 

Loud was the hungry voice of Panama in 
protest. It was indistinguishable from the 
voice of the administration in Washington. A 
most iniquitous thing was it for Colombia to 
try to save for its people the value of the canal 
franchise. Indignation deep and righteous as 
that of Wall street saints over political and 
financial iniquity spread over official America. 
Colombia wanted just a bribe. It had no gov- 
ernment anyway. Great was the infamy of 
the men who wanted for wicked Colombia 
rather than for the pious Panama Company, 



i68 Roosevelt and tJie REPuBLtc 

the plethoric Yankee millions. Colombia did 
not know its opportunity. It had let it slip. 

In its simplicity Congress suggested turning 
to Nicaragua, as the President had been in- 
structed to do should such a situation arise. 
There was plenty of time. If terms could not 
be made for the Nicaragua route, Colombia 
and the Panama company might be left to fight 
it out. When they had done, the United States 
might make its bargain. It could not do worse 
than it was doing at any rate. Panama junk 
would be worth less next year or the next. 

**The special opportunity," said the Review 
of Reviews, "oi the Panama movement lay in 
the powerful support in the United States and 
France of the Panama Canal Company, which 
had already made a conditional sale of its 
assets to the government." 

With strange prevision, the Review of Re- 
viewSy notoriously close to the administration 
and sharing administration secrets, told in its 
issue for November, 1903, the story of the 
Panama revolution, which took place after the 
magazine had gone to subscribers. This story 
was circumstantial, and missed no essential 
detail. To be sure, it was forecast, but it 
made the writer a prophet or a sharer of ad- 
ministration secrets denied the general public. 
Panama, it was hinted, might revolt. The 
United States might support it. Panama 
might give authority to dig the canal and take 
the Yankee millions. More Yankee millions 
might in that way find a lodging place in the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 169 

hands of the good and patriotic Panama com- 
pany. 

Panama took advantage of the condition. A 
handful of Panama company agents, said to 
have been paid Hberally for their activity, 
raised the standard of revolt. One of the num- 
ber "confessed" at a later date and told of the 
generous thousands of Panama cash that 
served as the life-blood of this uprising. 
Bunau Varilla, agent, promoter and lobbyist 
of the Panama company, was made diplomatic 
a^ent of the Panama Junta. Lawyer William 
Cromwell, lobbyist, legal adviser and stock- 
holder of the Panama company, became a con- 
fidential adviser of the Washington adminis- 
tration in Panama business. 

November 3, 1903, the standard of revolt 
was raised. American warships immediately 
guarded the isthmus from both sides. Good 
Mr. Hay, who had so politely asked England's 
permission to build the canal, forgot that 
Colombia had any interest at all. Panama 
was recognized as a new nation November 6. 
Immediately an insurrectionary Junta was on 
its way to Washington to sign a treaty offen- 
sive and defensive for the new republic, and 
sell canal concessions. 

Suddenly it became important to keep traffic 
open on the isthmus. American warships con- 
fronted Colombia when she talked of putting 
down the insurrection. The old treaty, of 
1846, made by Colombia with the undoubted 
intention of insuring Colombia peaceful pos- 
session of the isthmus, was with gravely judi- 



i^O ROOSEVE'.LT AND THE REPUBLIC 

cious countenance twisted about to mean that 
it gave the right to the United States to ex- 
chide Colombia. That is, we said with a smile 
and with a wnnk scarcely perceptible, that a 
sovereign state had made a treaty with us by 
implication abdicating its sovereignty. This 
was not Great Britain with a big, ugly navy, 
but poor little Colombia. The wolf licked his 
chops and winked. "This lamb made a treaty 
with me permitting me to bite off its left hind 
leg. It became my duty to bite off the leg 
for the benefit of the lamb, and I did it out of 
consideration for her." 

When Colombia got ready to whip the hand- 
ful of Panama company employees and adven- 
turers into subjection, she looked into Yankee 
rifles. 

"Sorry," said the polite Mr. Roosevelt, "but 
Panama is a sovereign state under a treaty of 
alliance with us, offensive and defensive. Its 
patriots are now enjoying their reward in an- 
ticipation of the ten millions I am about to 
give them for making my pathway smooth 
across the isthmus. Monsieur Varilla, Mr. 
Cromwell, and their high-minded friends, look 
forward with serene confidence to the posses- 
sion of forty millions of good Yankee dollars, 
representing lapsed franchises, a pile of 
selected junk, a personally conducted revolu- 
tion, a Junta treaty, and an infinite amount of 
skillful lobbying and greasing of ways. It is a 
closed incident. Your property! Receiving 
stolen goods! Abetting a robber and sharing 
his plunder! Why, my dear Colombia. You 



Roosevelt and the Republic 171 

talk as though the decalogue had a place in in- 
ternational affairs. Don't you know, Miss 
Colombia, that in this business we act in — 

''The good old way and simple plan, 

"That he shall take who has the power, 

"And he shall keep who can." 

In fact it was a closed incident. "The more 
the matter was considered, the more plain be- 
came the fact that everybody who wanted the 
Isthmian Canal dug would have to support 
the policy of the administration," said the Re- 
view of Reviews. In a later issue it hurled 
defiance in this wise: 

"It is enough to say that the course was 
one for which the government is ready to as- 
sume responsibility in the face of all comers." 

Mr. Roosevelt could hardly have phrased it 
better. "What are you going to do about it?" 

To be sure, the treaty was to be ratified. 
An enlightened claque — the same that "had 
brought strong pressure upon the government 
to buy the assets of an abandoned enterprise 
and the privilege of franchises on their face 
non-transferable, and which had long since 
lapsed" — this enlightened claque vociferously 
demanded the ratification of the treaty. 

President Roosevelt is nothing if not prac- 
tical. To the question is it right he gave 
the convincing retort: "We have the power. 
This canal will be a wonderful thing for the 
country, especially the South." 

Such pure unsullied patriots as Francis B. 
Loomis, later of Venezuela asphalt fame, went 
forth to demonstrate to the public the high 



172 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ethical ground of the administration in this 
business. With such a sponsor, there could 
be no suspicion of wrong. 

It was a ninety day sensation. Democratic 
Congressional leaders, as usual, got their price, 
a miserable mess of pottage, for their consti- 
tuents in canal value, especially to the Gulf 
states. This was far more important to the 
country than law, manhood, conscience, right. 
Territorial buccaneering was canonized as a 
pious thing, and became a most righteous 
piece of gentlemanly appropriation. Raffles 
could have had no higher motive. 

Every patriotic — and credulous — person 
must accept the righteous good faith of our 
government in this transaction. We must be- 
lieve perforce that the programme told in ad- 
vance by administration friends, carried out to 
the letter by administration friends with the full 
and active support of the administration, was 
a movement springing spontaneously from a 
different and an independent source. Follow- 
ing the rejection of the treaty, the revolution 
was only a coincidence. It was only a coinci- 
dence that America's government was ready 
to support it with ships and marines; only a 
coincidence that the ships and the marines 
were there ready for the work ; only a 
coincidence that Bunau Varilla, the agent for 
the Panama company, was the representative 
at Washington of the new Panama govern- 
ment; only a coincidence that he and his new 
nation were recognized immediately by our 
State Department; only a coincidence that 



Roosevelt and the Republic 173 

William Cromwell, attorney and promoter of 
the Panama company, was adviser of our gov- 
ernment. All these things get further integrity 
as coincidences by later stories of those who 
took part in the revolution, to the effect that 
they had an assurance in advance of support 
from this government, and were paid hand- 
somely for their activity in the uprising. It 
all just happened luckily for our government 
by a sort of special providence, the special 
providence which looks after the especially 
righteous ones who could not on any account 
have guilty knowledge or give guilty support 
to any enterprise. Even though it may appear 
piratical the thing was most proper and 
righteous 

Unquestionably the thing looks probable — 
more probable than some of the tales of the 
truthful Munchausen. A specially high- 
minded government was not supposed to know 
w^hat influences were at work in Washington. 
How could a man like Francis B. Loomis 
recognize the spoor of the "unclean beast" 
making smooth the path of Panama? 

''This belligerent, or more properly speak- 
ing, piratical way of looking at neighboring 
territory, was very characteristic of the West, 
and was the root of manifest destiny." 
(Roosevelt's Life of Benton, page 16.) 

Iv ' s case, frontiersmen were encroaching 
as seiuicrs upon practically uninhabited con- 
tiguous Spanish territory. Piracy to be sure! 
The rape of Panama was therefore "manifest 
destiny." 



174 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"The general feeling of the West afterward 
crystalized into what became known as the 
"manifest destiny" idea, which reduced to its 
simplest terms was: That it was our manifest 
destiny to swallow up the land of all adjoining 
nations that were too weak to withstand us ; 
a theory that forthwith obtained immense 
popularity with all statesmen of easy inter- 
national morality." (Roosevelt's Life of Ben- 
ton, page 40.) 

Statesmen of easy international morality 
evidently were not confined to Benton's time, 
nor to the West. 

Colombia missed its pocketbook and its back 
lot. If it had been an individual, it would 
have been robbery. The offense was expiated 
somewhat by passing the plunder over to the 
good Panama company and its tools of the 
isthmus. America showed that it was ready 
to take its own medicine. The process of 
retribution is still going on. Before the big 
ditch is finished we will have spent as much 
thereon as it would require to build and equip 
two double-tracked lines of railway from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific coast. But since this 
might induce a rational solution of the railway 
problem and develop millions of acres of 
American land, and build millions of Ameri- 
can homes, it would have been very wicked. 
The government can only engage in water 
transportation problems, where the benefit may 
accrue to the whole world, but more par- 
ticularly to nations like Great Britain, with 
great merchant fleets. Then we could not 



Roosevelt and the Republic 175 

transport our big battleships upon the railway, 
and above all things we must remain armed 
to the teeth. Probably half a century hence 
the canal may have some important influence 
upon American transportation problems. 

Sapient engineers who showed such agility 
in turning somersaults upon the proposition 
of locating the canal, seem to have been quite 
as accurate in its estimates. It was to cost 
$134,000,000, and several dollars and several 
cents. It was all figured down to 23-100 of a 
dollar. Not a cent more, not a cent less. Now 
we are told by equally good authority — the 
engineers in charge, that it will cost $300,- 
000,000. This time the cents have been neg- 
lected. The estimate is not final. 

Given carte blanc to construct the canal, 
Roosevelt has plunged into the task with 
characteristic modesty. This is the one enter- 
prise on earth where no mistakes have been 
made — by the administration. Critics who 
have found defects are mendacious carpers. 
Roosevelt's portly friend of the War Depart- 
ment says so. 

Roosevelt has refused to be hampered in this 
affair. When he got tired of the commission 
provided by Congress, he just discharged the 
commission, installed nominal successors — for 
Roosevelt always wants to be within the law 
— and placed the power in the hands of a com- 
mission of his own under the attractive appella- 
tion of an executive committee. This commit- 
tee quit. In Theodore P. Shonts that was con- 
sidered entirely within his discretion. He was 



176 Roosevelt and the Republic 

treated pleasantly. J. F. Wallace, chief en- 
gineer, quit the place a traitor. Roosevelt's 
portly secretary told him plainly the enormity 
of his offense. Wallace was obliged to listen. 
So great was Wallace's offense that the admin- 
istration would not touch the tainted informa- 
tion which he was willing to give. Wallace 
must be made an example for all time. There 
are those who regard Wallace entirely within 
his rights in quitting the canal, just as Roose- 
velt was within his rights in quitting the Navy 
Department when he did. As to the question 
of patriotism, carping critics raise it in each 
case. 

When Chief Engineer Stevens got enough 
of the big ditch, he was treated something like 
a human being, with the right of directing his 
own activities and his fortunes. By his 
resignation, he probably brought so strongly 
to light as to defeat the plan a proposition by 
which such men as Thomas F. Ryan were to 
get some millions out of the canal as nominal 
contractors, whose duty it was to look on 
while government employees superintended 
and planned the work, and the government 
financed it. 

Changes in personnel and executive organ- 
ization have followed one another with 
kaleidoscopic rapidity — all in the interest of 
efficient administration. No mistakes have 
been made. After Wallace had refused to 
sacrifice his wife and family to the Roosevelt 
canal god, and Stevens had become tired of 
being meddled with. President Roosevelt or- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 177 

dered army engineers to do the work. He has 
them where he wants them as their com- 
mander-in-chief. A government paper gives 
the "facts." There is no danger anywhere 
now of anything going astray. 

The great ditch has already given Roosevelt 
a background for all sorts of wonderful por- 
traits, showing him literally digging the canal. 
It has also been the occasion for thousands 
of columns of presidential advertising, and a 
sensational outing, leaving the country gov- 
erned by wireless telegraphy. There are some 
few imperfections which with another admin- 
istration might have been magnified into scan- 
dals, such as the meditated eating concessions 
and the peculiar attempt to furnish feminine 
society and domestic comfort to the workmen. 
But these do not count. Roosevelt himself 
hunted for misdoing on the Isthmus with a 
megaphone and a brass band. His portly war 
secretary made widely heralded visits, and 
pronounced all well. It could not be other- 
wise when we have infallible persons in 
charge. 

If any other person than Roosevelt had en- 
gineered Panama, especially the raid upon 
Colombia, and the payment of those millions 
to the Panama company, we would at least 
have had our suspicions. His being "easy" 
for such men as Piatt and Quay, explains, no 
doubt, his being "easy" for such other men 
as Bunau Varilla and William Cromwell. 
Seeing it is Roosevelt probably it is not worth 
while regretting that we could not have begun 



178 Roosevelt and the Republic 

this great canal enterprise without an act 
which future historians may characterize as 
piracy, just as Roosevelt, historian, has char- 
acterized some of our earlier acquisitions of 
territory. A few years delay in the opening of 
the canal would not have made a great dif- 
ference, but an act of piracy in the life of the 
nation is an act of piracy throughout all his- 
tory. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 179 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ROOSEVELT REVISES MONROE DOCTRINE 

VENEZUELA SANTO DOMINGO. 

Roosevelt's success with Panama made a 
precedent for making over the whole South 
American pudding to his taste. He announced 
officially and unofficially that the nations of 
South America which did well (according to 
Anglo-Saxon standards) had nothing to fear, 
but those which showed weakness in "orderly 
liberty" were likely to have this government 
point out the way in which affairs govern- 
mental are properly conducted. 

There was the Monroe doctrine, well enough 
in its way, but not quite the doctrine it would 
have been had President Roosevelt been there 
to formulate it — a misfortune made quite un- 
avoidable by the accident of his birth-time. 
President Roosevelt did his best to remedy the 
defect. He made an announcement which his 
admirers heralded as the ''New Monroe Doc- 
trine," which might be summarized as a dec- 
laration that the United States felt responsible 
for the action of all other American states, and 
it would not shirk its "duty." Do wrong and 
your big brother of the North will get you ! 

Punctillious honesty has always been dear 



'i8o Roosevelt and the Republic 

to President Roosevelt. It has grown upon 
him since in 1896 he witnessed the high- 
minded Wall street financiers foil the plunder- 
ing hordes of the West and South. Especially 
does President Roosevelt sympathize with per- 
sons who lend out money, through motives of 
generous service to their fellow men. Their 
security is Roosevelt's care. Bischoflfscheim 
and Goldschmidt, of the Netherlands, the 
thrifty home of Roosevelt's ancestors, bought 
for fifty cents upon the dollar a claim of about 
three millions of dollars against Santo Do- 
mingo. The original lender, with overwhelm- 
ing generosity, had taken only 25 per cent, for 
his commission. So generous were the money- 
changers that somebody connected with Santo 
Domingo actually got about $190,000 and 
pledged for its payment about $300,000 a year 
for twenty-five years. Mr. Isaacs of the three 
gilded balls never drove so sharp a bargain. 

The people of Santo Domingo were called 
upon to pay only about $3,800,000, for the loan 
on which their government realized $190,000. 
This was a typical case. American, English, 
French, German, Italian, and other European 
promoters of adventurous and impecunious 
temper, love the soil^of South America. By 
smooth wiles these adventurers get from some 
officer or pretender of brief authority a "con- 
cession" or license to rob the nation of public 
property, either perpetually or for a period of 
years. Possibly these adventurers are the 
agents of money-lenders who finance some 
revolution, giving the borrower the commis- 



Roosevelt and the Republic i8r' 

sion and retaining the principal. "Conces- 
sions" are not unknown in North America, but 
here they go to respectable and substantial na- 
tives, as a reward for exceptional service in 
financing country-saving campaigns. 

But to return to our theme. Adventurous 
foreigners had been especially active in the 
more unsettled states of Central America and 
of Northern South America. Everything 
worth having seems to have been "conceded." 
Forests, asphalt mines, navigation rights, all 
had been bestowed upon impecunious foreign- 
ers. As soon as the "concession" was given, 
the foreigner went to a foreign country and 
"capitalized" his concession. Millions in "capi- 
talization" were put out on the strength of 
these gifts of public plunder. After this 
"capitalization" had reached the hands of "in- 
nocent purchasers," — holy innocents, the con- 
cessionaries or the money-lenders pressed their 
claims against the state. European chancel- 
leries were appealed to and force was forth- 
coming to extract the blood-money. Now and 
then the South American countries fell into 
the hands of officers not sufficiently vile to 
acknowledge these iniquitous claims. That 
was repudiation and an occasion for the "big 
stick." 

This was the situation in Venezuela when 
Great Britain and Germany, with their gal- 
lant fleets so valorously engaged the dis- 
mantled fleets of that country. Venezuela 
had been through all this sort of exploitation. 
It seems to have been cursed with a perennial 



1 82 Roosevelt and the Republic 

crop of foreign adventurers and approachable 
officers. 

When Castro came into power he decided 
that this business had gone far enough, Cas- 
tro refused to recognize the validity of these 
claims. ''Concessions," the terms of vi^hich 
had not been kept by the beneficiaries — for 
terms were sometimes attached to these "con- 
cessions" — Castro decided to have cancelled. 
It was something as though this country had 
an administration sufficiently wicked to try to 
reclaim the public patrimony of mine and for- 
est given away to promoters without money 
and without price. 

Loud was the howl of ''concessionaires." 
That dishonest scoundrel of Venezuela 
actually objected to having his people robbed 
for the benefit of foreigners. He was opposed 
to giving away the wealth of mine and forest 
as a free gift. So also was he opposed to 
saddling millions upon his people for the pay- 
ment of bogus claims. 

Monstrous! That model of Anglo-Saxon 
piety, Great Britain, joined hands with the 
sturdy and upright Kaiser in sending warships 
to Venezuela. Gallantly did the combined 
fleet attack and sink defenseless vessels. Dis- 
mantled hulks moored in the harbor felt the 
weight of Anglo-German naval power. 
Venezuelan lives were crushed out. Venezuelan 
property was destroyed. They would teach 
Castro morality if they had to shoot it into 
him. 

Castro moved back from the shore. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 1S3 

"Fire away, gentlemen." 

Then the exponents of highly civilized gov- 
ernment, in the support of their adventurers, 
destroyed one of Castro's seaports. 

Had Roosevelt wanted to announce a new 
doctrine which might have taken an honored 
place by the side of that of President Monroe, 
he had the opportunity when the intention of 
making this demonstration came to him 
through the crooked mazes of the interested 
chancelleries. **This nation recognizes no 
such international right as the collection of 
contractual debts by the might of warships. 
It protests in the name of the American people 
against making the refusal to pay contractual 
claims a cause for war." 

President Roosevelt might have said this. 
He would have been in the company, in mak- 
ing such a declaration, of Adams, Marcy, 
Seward, Fish, Evarts and Blaine. And Roose- 
velt could have pointed "out that in civilized 
countries claims for money are no longer en- 
forced at the point of a revolver. If honest 
claims are not enforced in this way, nations 
can hardly claim the right to enforce by such 
method iniquitous claims of adventurous pro- 
moters who never did give value for the things 
they claim as theirs. 

Men of this kind go into these disturbed 
countries knowing the condition in these coun- 
tries of politics and laws. There are plenty 
of orderly places on earth for their activities. 
If they choose these unsettled conditions for 
purposes neither high nor holy, let them abide 



184 Roosevelt and the Republic 

the consequences. Let their claims be ad- 
justed by the courts of the country with which 
they dealt in getting privileges. If that coun- 
try s laws were good enough to give ''conces- 
sions" they are good enough to interpret them. 

With the might of America behind this doc- 
trine, and the friendship of America depending 
upon its being respected, European nations 
would respect the doctrine. Then would we 
have an end of the disgusting spectacle of see- 
ing men killed and property destroyed to col- 
lect blood-money — to enforce claims of adven- 
turers and Shylocks. 

There was plenty of opportunity for good 
red-blooded action, such as President Cleve- 
land took when Great Britain a few years be- 
fore tried to hector Venezuela out of territory. 
Our heroic president, however, has shown 
aversion to wounding the feelings of great 
powers. He begged the powers to desist and 
urged Castro to pay. 

''Send your claims to the Hague," said 
Castro. "I shall abide the result." 

Kaiser Wilhelm wanted his friend Theodore 
Roosevelt as arbitrator. Roosevelt was not 
looking for that sort of trouble. The gallant 
fleets of Germany and England withdrew after 
having committed a final act of murderous bad 
faith and vandalism. To the Hague went the 
dispute, where it had a true opera bouffe de- 
nouement. It was fully demonstrated that 
there was no basis whatever for nine-tenths of 
the claims which Germany and England tried 
to enforce by murderous brute might. Little 



Roosevelt and the Republic 185 

Castro had taught a lesson to several big for- 
eign bullies. 

Americans had been in the same concession- 
hunting business. Horatio R. Hamilton, of 
New York, had in the eighties received asphalt, 
timber and navigation concessions from some- 
body in temporary control in Venezuela. In 
turn he was to make certain rivers navigable, 
and to colonize and develop a portion of the 
country. 

There was no pretense of carrying out the 
portion of the concession requiring outlay by 
Hamilton or his assigns. For Hamilton pur- 
sued the usual course and "capitalized" his 
concession. But the asphalt mine promised 
more riches than a mine of gold. There were 
miles of city streets to pave and aldermen 
willing to give good prices for the work. 
Asphalt flowed forth generously. The timber 
stood for future years. Rivers remained un- 
navigable. Acres remained in their pristine 
wildness. 

Barber Asphalt Company, General Asphalt 
Company, New York and Bermudez Asphalt 
Company, different names for associated 
asphalt interests, the last named a mere sub- 
sidiary company of the General Asphalt Com- 
pany, had fastened their tentacles upon Ameri- 
can city streets. There was but one danger 
to this trust. The asphalt supply in Castro's 
dominions might some day be turned loose in 
other hands, and then the monopoly so pain- 
fully built up through years of unremitting 
toil in secret places and dark chambers, would 



1 86 Roosevelt and the Republic 

have to be established all over again. Faith- 
ful trust minions had the American title to 
Venezuelan concessions, but the rascally Cas- 
tro threatened to saw off the limb upon which 
the leisurely concessionaire was sitting. He 
had started suit for annulment of the fran- 
chise. 

Two dreadful things would follow the suc- 
cess of Castro in such a suit: United States 
cities might get cheap asphalt paving; Venez- 
uelans might get some of the benefit of their 
own natural resources. The problem for the 
State Department at Washington was how to 
prevent these dire calamities. 

Those patriotic gentlemen of asphalt fame 
who had been seeing to it that American 
municipalities paid $3 a square yard for paving 
worth $1.50, now invaded Washington to pre- 
vent their labors from being undone. Lobbies 
were organized about the State and other de- 
partments. Newspapers scored Castro. States- 
men denounced Castro. He was ambitious, 
self-seeking, crooked, bent upon holding up 
saintly foreigners and despoiling them. His 
country was going to the dogs. He was about 
to be overthrown. There was a terrible state 
of affairs in Venezuela. 

Filibusters had been sent into Venezuela by 
the asphalt interests and by a French cable 
company which had another concession. This 
gave Castro another handle against the inter- 
ests which wanted to get rid of him for a 
more tractable patriot. Castro stuck to his 
text. The suit for annulment went serenely 



Roosevelt and the Republic 187 

forward. If the concessionaires had a claim, 
let them press it in the courts of Venezuela. 
The concession rested upon Venezuelan gov- 
ernmental authority. Its interpretation should 
certainly rest there also. Castro was at the 
head of a sovereign nation, the same sovereign 
nation which was recognized when the conces- 
sion was accepted. No objection was then made 
to the authority of Venezuela's government. 
Then it was giving away the heritage of the 
Venezuelan people. Now that the Venezuelan 
government was trying to reclaim that heritage 
for its people, it would hear no questioning 
of its authority. 

Castro's position was unimpeachable. He 
bad justice and law, too, upon his side. " 

Then came forward that pure and ingenuous 
public servant. Assistant Secretary of State 
Francis B. Loomis, one of the high-minded 
men whom President Roosevelt delighted to 
honor, and suggested that Castro arbitrate. 
Castro was barely polite. The courts of 
Venezuela were open. American concession- 
aires would get all they were entitled to, no 
more. There were veiled threats. As the case 
against the concessionaires progressed in 
Venezuela, the lobby inspired more drastic ful- 
minations against Castro. Always Castro re- 
mained immovable and always Castro won. 

Faithfully did the State Department stand 
by the Asphalt trust. Diligently, with Francis 
B. Loomis as spokesman, did the administra- 
tion at Washington labor to preserve to the 
asphalt trust its monopoly of the paving ma- 



l8S Roosevelt and the Republic 

terial most favored in American cities. This 
phase of the case was critical, for Castro had 
caused a receiver to be appointed for the New 
York and Bermudez Asphalt Company in 
Venezuela, and the receiver was mining 
Venezuelan asphalt and placing it upon the 
American markets in competition with the 
trust. Such villainy greatly shocked the Wash- 
ington administration. Strenuously did it strive 
to rob the Venezuelan public of the wealth in 
its asphalt mines, as strenuously as it strove 
to protect the paving monopoly at home. 

So insistent did the State Department urge 
and threaten that its attitude brought out a 
protest from the American minister in 
Venezuela. He could not properly exert such 
pressure for concessionaires. Their case 
lacked righteousness. Besides he was em- 
barrassed by the fact that the former American 
minister to Venezuela, and the then Assistant 
Secretary of State, his superior, had, when in 
Venezuela, openly pressed against the Ven- 
ezuelan government claims in which the min- 
ister had a pecuniary interest. He had used 
his position for private gain. Loans had been 
made by asphalt interests to the American 
minister while he was actually engaged in 
looking after asphalt interests. All this had 
injured the standing of America's representa- 
tive. Venezuelans, probably not saints them- 
selves, looked for a nicer sense of honor and 
integrity in America's diplomats. 

Protests from the American minister in 
Venezuela found their way into the hands of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 189 

the officer whom the minister criticized. It 
goes without saying that they were not made 
public. On the other hand, the things re- 
quired of the minister grew more galHng. In 
control at both ends, Mr. Loomis redoubled 
his efforts to win the case of the threatened 
asphalt company. 

Minister Herbert W. Bowen stood this until 
he could stand it no longer. If he could not 
move the State Department, he would try 
the American people. Getting its material 
from Bowen, the New York Herald printed an 
expose of the whole unsavory mess. 

Angry was the storm that burst over the 
devoted head of Minister Bowen. It might 
have been true that Francis B. Loomis, now 
practically Secretary of State, for John Hay 
was a very sick man and much absent — it 
might have been true that the real head of the 
State Department had as a diplomat been 
guilty of ''indiscretions.'* Considering his con- 
nections at that time, his borrowings from 
claimants and his other queer capers, he might 
now be overzealous in the interests of the 
asphalt trust. But this was as nothing com- 
pared with the heinousness of giving the pub- 
lic an inkling of what was going on. It was 
scandalizing the administration. Graft in the 
Roosevelt State Department ! Perish the 
thought ! 

Minister Bowen was angrily recalled by the 
man whom he had accused. Hot with indig- 
nation, Bowen came. Secretary of War Taft, 
the general utility nran of the Roosevelt ad- 



190 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ministration, was assigned to apply the white- 
wash. The big secretary gave the white coat 
to Francis B. Loomis. It seemed as agree- 
able to him as taking a dose of wormwood, but 
it was done heroically. Mr. Taft has never 
balked yet at a job set for him by the "Dutch 
Uncle," whose heir expectant he is. Shades 
were pretty dark for the thickest coat of white- 
wash — but it sufficed. 

Hot in the anger of an honest man, Minister 
Bowen went before the President and offered 
to prove his charges to the satisfaction of a 
disinterested person who might go into them. 
That was not the point. His charges might 
or might not be true. He was undiplomatic. 
State Department iniquity could do the admin- 
istration no harm while it was unknown to 
the public. Minister Bowen made it known 
to the public. He was obviously a traitor to 
the administration. No ! no ! there was no ex- 
planation. He had violated diplomatic court- 
esy. He had been insubordinate. Honesty 
was all right in its place, but it was not in a 
class with courtesy, and subordination in an 
administration that was absolutely above sus- 
picion. 

Minister Bowen was officially branded as an 
Ananias. Roosevelt himself gave the mud 
bath, as he insists upon doing on such oc- 
casions. Minister Bowen, who mingled too 
much blunt and straightforward honesty with 
his diplomatic tact, retired from the service in 
disgrace. Loomis was promoted to a min- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 191 

istry and permitted later to drop silently out 
of sight. 

With a flourish of trumpets, Judge William 
J. Calhoun, a man who had public confi- 
dence, was sent to "investigate" asphalt and 
Venezuela. His report sleeps with the Har- 
mon and Judson report upon Paul Morton and 
Sante Fe rebating. Like the report upon the 
State Trust Company, it may be available to 
the future historian.* 

There were some of the same elements in 
the Santo Domingo coup that we have found 
in the Venezuela-asphalt episode. In this case 
President Roosevelt decided to forestall the 
foreigners by himself seizing the customs 
houses of the island republic and proceeding 
to collect the taxes imposed upon the natives 
for the benefit of foreign creditors and conces- 
sionaires. 

As we saw above, the Monroe doctrine fur- 
nished the general commission. As historians 
know that doctrine and as other American 
administrations had interpreted it, it expressed 
determined opposition upon the part of the 
United States of America to the subversion by 
any European power of any independent gov- 
ernment on the American continent. It did 
not declare the right of the United States to 
subvert such governments, or to declare a 



f' *Castro-baiting in the interest of the asphalt combire 
has recommenced as we go to press, and a dispatch sa) s 
Calhoun's report has been made public with correspond- 
ence sent to Congress. 



192 Roosevelt and the Republic 

protectorate over them, or to guarantee their 
debts, or to become receiver for them. That 
was the misfortune of the original Monroe doc- 
trine. 

This doctrine, at all events, and the right- 
eous claim of Bischoffscheim and Goldschmidt, 
which we have referred to above, made occa- 
sion for President Roosevelt's action. Some 
sort of native government was found to give 
the proceedings verisimilitude. Morales, an 
adventurer contending for the presidency, 
made a bargain with the American State De- 
partment. This bargain was made by Naval 
Officer Dillingham, as we now recall, by direc- 
tion of Francis B. Loomis, our conscientious 
statesman-friend of the Venezuela-asphalt epi- 
sode. In sheer modesty, the administration 
kept this agreement secret from the Senate of 
the United States and from the public. It 
provided practically that the United States 
should become receiver for Santo Domingo, 
seize its revenues, pay fifty-five per cent, to 
foreign creditors and give over forty-five per 
cent, to the Santo Domingoans to apply to 
governmental expenses. 

The constitution of the United States does 
not provide for the President acting as. re- 
ceiver for bankrupt nations and using the 
executive departments for carrying on the busi- 
ness. So much the worse for the constitution. 
When Congress had discovered the proceed- 
ing, February, 1905, a protocol was presented 
to the Senate, and it was asked to ratify the 
seizure of an island nation for the benefit of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 193 

alleged creditors. Shoulder to shoulder with 
Bischoffscheim and Goldschmidt stood the 
Santo Domingo Improvement Company, the 
important American claimant. A whole shoal 
of worthy fellows must be protected. 

With laudable forethought, the administra- 
tion had the claims "arbitrated," and Congress 
had only to witness the levying of the execu- 
tion, and attend the sheriff sale. Congress 
thought the thing a trifle drastic and held back. 
Then the newspaper claque, which is always 
at the back of every administration, if the 
fireworks are sufficiently brilliant, went to rais- 
ing a great noise. 

Encouraged by the din, the administration 
decided to persist in its course. Congress or 
no Congress. It had made an agreement, al- 
though this, too, had been omitted from the 
constitution as a thing which might be made 
by the President against the will of Congress. 

Pious motives more than made up for the 
irregularity. Roosevelt and his noisy news- 
papers friends demonstrated that in a republic 
based upon government by the people, the 
chief executive is given autocratic powers over 
weak neighboring nations, as well as American 
dependencies. It could not be denied. Fin- 
land has far more to say in its own affairs 
governmental than the people of the Philip- 
pines, Cuba, or Santo Domingo have to say 
in theirs. It is a question if the Finlanders 
are not more nearly free than the Porto Ricans. 
Nicholas of Russia has less power over Fin- 



194 Roosevelt and the Republic 

land than has Theodore Roosevelt over some 
of America's v^ards. 

This was all in the interest of "orderly free 
government." 

When the Senate refused to ratify a treaty 
with Santo Domingo, carrying out the Presi- 
dent's plan, the President carried it out any- 
way. By a clever subterfuge, our conscientious 
upholder of law got the nominal president of 
Santo Domingo to appoint the same men 
whom President Roosevelt had appointed to 
carry out the receivership plan. American 
warships were placed on duty, and American 
soldiers guarded these agents in doing their 
work. The agreement must be carried out. 

When this high-minded plan of chasing the 
devil about the stump was pointed out later 
in Congress, Senator Spooner, then spokes- 
man for the administration, showed triumph- 
antly that the constitution of the United States 
had not been violated — not technically. Aided 
by the ''Democratic" Joseph Blackburn of 
Kentucky, who is now reaping his reward in 
Panama, the treaty was finally ratified. 

This probably does not bring the plan at all 
within the constitution. But let that pass. 
One of the chief merits of a plan of this kind 
is the exhibition of autocratic power which is 
necessary to its carrying out. Some day the 
precedent may be needed by a booted and 
spurred man in the White House. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 195 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PIOUS MASTICATION AND "BENEVOLENT 
ASSIMILATION." 

Theodore Roosevelt, according to his biog- 
raphers, felt it a merit that he had aided in 
bringing about the Spanish war. Specifica- 
tions have not been given. Possibly it was 
he who sent the Maine on its precious Don- 
baiting expedition to Havana Harbor, with its 
more than tragic sequel. The man who gave 
that order, whoever he may be, can claim full 
credit for bringing about the war. Few men 
other than Roosevelt would be capable of such 
splendid recklessness. 

President McKinley lagged back for a time, 
but the war spirit finally got hold of him. 
When Spain conceded everything, April 5, 
1898, making conditions only which would 
save her face, the administration brushed the 
concessions aside. War was wanted, nothing 
else. If there is merit in blood atonement, 
this country has certainly paid the price in full. 
But this war gave our heroes, Mark Tapley 
like, a chance to come out strong. What mat- 
ter though history may call the war iniquitous, 
fraught with deadly consequences to the Re- 
public. 



196 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Once his hand was put to the reeking plow, 
President McKinley insisted upon turning to 
the very end the furrow of death and destruc- 
tion. This was an important reason given by 
Theodore Roosevelt in 1900 why the American 
people should re-elect President McKinley, 
and incidentally elect with him Vice-President 
Roosevelt. Spain had been vanquished. We 
had turned our guns against our former allies. 
The administration had decided to push the 
Philippine war to the bitter end. Filipinos 
must be piously masticated and benevolently 
assimilated, something as the tiger did the 
Lady of Niger. 

Come forward now good Historian Roose- 
velt and tell us what we may expect from the 
administration policy in the Philippines. 

"At best the inhabitants of a colony are in 
a cramped and unnatural state. At the worst, 
the establishment of a colony prevents all 
healthy popular growth." 

"At present the only hope for a colony that 
wishes to attain full moral and mental growth 
is to become an independent state, or part of an 
independent state." 

"Under the best of circumstances, therefore, 
the colony is in a false position. But if the 
colony is in a position where the colonizing 
nation has to do its work by means of other 
inferior races, the condition is much worse. 
From the standpoint of the race, little or noth- 
ing has been gained by the English conquest 
and colonization of Jamaica. Jamaica has 
merely been turned into a negro island with a 



Roosevelt and the Republic 197 

future much like Santo Domingo. British 
Guiana, however well administered, it nothing 
but a colony where a few hundred, or a few 
thousand white men hold the superior posi- 
tions, while the bulk of the population is com- 
posed of Indians, negroes and Asiatics. 

''Looked at through the vista of centuries, 
such a colony contains less promise of true 
growth than does a state like Venezuela or 
Ecuador. The history of most of the South 
American republics has been both mean and 
bloody, but there is at least a chance that they 
may at last develop after infinite tribulation 
and suffering into a civilization quite as high 
and stable as that of such a European state 
as Portugal. BUT THERE IS NO SUCH 
CHANCE FOR ANY TROPICAL AMERI- 
CAN COLONY OWNED BY A NORTH- 
ERN EUROPEAN RACE. It is distinctly in 
the interest of civilization that the present 
states in the two Americas should develop 
along their own lines, and however desirable it 
may be that many of them should receive 
European immigration, it is highly undesirable 
that any should be under European control." 
(Roosevelt's American Ideals, pages 235-7.) 

''English rule in India, while it may last for 
decades, or even for centuries, must eventually 
come to an end and leave little trace of its 
existence." (Roosevelt's Benton, page 261.) 

"A man is not a good citizen, I care not 
how lofty his thoughts are in the abstract, if 
his actions do not square with his professions." 
(Writings of Theodore Roosevelt.) 



198 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"The most unsafe adviser is the man who 
would advise us to do evil that good may come 
of it." (Writings of Theodore Roosevelt.) 

President Roosevelt fondly hopes that Amer- 
ica may be an exception to the rule laid down 
by Historian Roosevelt. If it should not be, 
then let the wrong of it rest where it belongs, 
upon the head of William Jennings Bryan. 
According to Mr. Roosevelt, Bryan's action in 
aiding the McKinley administration to ratify 
the Spanish treaty, despite the protest of such 
men as Senator Money, was directly re- 
sponsible for the whole devil's dance of colon- 
ial and imperial policy. In schoolboy phrase : 
"Now see what you made me do, Willie 
Bryan !" 

O rare and wonderful Mr. Bryan! How 
could you be so cruel as to force the good 
President McKinley to insist upon the cession 
of the Philippines ! How is it that your sinister 
shadow fell over the reluctant American treaty 
commissioners and compelled them to hold out 
for the Philippines as an American colony? 
What evil genius prompted you to turn Amer- 
ican guns upon our Filipino allies and shoot to 
pieces that government which the venerable 
Senator Hoar found capable of administering 
Filipino affairs and keeping excellent order? 
What devil prompted you to hypnotize the 
majority party in the Senate to approve the 
Spanish treaty without having in it a distinct 
pledge for immediate liberty and independence 
for the Filipinos? 

Don't tell me that you thought the Filipinos 



Roosevelt and the Republic 199 

safer in American than in Spanish hands. You 
ought to have knov^n better. Away w^ith your 
excuse that the American traditions of liberty 
and independence were your security that 
America would not crush out the liberties of 
another people and hold them in subjection. 
Do not tell me that the American Declaration 
of Independence was your bond. 

You got a few minority senators to join 
with the majority in ratifying this treaty with- 
out pledging in the treaty itself the good faith 
of the administration. Do not now try to 
shirk your responsibility for General Jacob 
Smith, he of the sulphurous nickname — and 
record; or Major Glenn, of water cure fame; 
or Major Waller; or Lieutenant Arnold; or 
General *'Reconcentrado" Bell. To your action 
can be traced directly the villainous treachery 
of Gen. Frederick Funston in claiming as a 
mendicant the hospitality of Aguinaldo and 
then betraying him. Let the consequences of 
your acts to the third and fourth generation of 
fallacious inference fall upon your devoted 
head. O rare and wonderful Mr. Bryan ! Who 
would have thought you capable of such dire 
mischief? Who would have suspected your 
responsibility for so much of the wickedness in 
our colonial experiments. Who, except Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, would have discovered your 
more than hypnotic influence upon the Mc- 
Kinley administration. Thrice rare and won- 
derful Mr. Bryan! 

Carried away with the fire of righteous 
wrath, Theodore Roosevelt, candidate for 



200 Roosevelt and the Republic 

the vice-presidency, mercilessly applied the 
scourge to the Democrats in this Philippine 
business. They had approved the rescue of 
the legation in China and the v^ithdrav^al of 
soldiers as soon as it was done. How did that 
differ from the Filipino policy of the adminis- 
tration? Everybody had to take their three 
guesses. But it would have been quite as d'f- 
ficult to tell how one resembled the otV»er 
That was the especial merit of the comparison 

These Filipinos were worse than Boxers. 
Giving them self-government would be like 
setting up a republic under an Apache chief. 
Here again it took rare insight to appreciate 
fully the comparison. But two out of the 
eighty tribes in the island opposed American 
rule. These two tribes contained more than 
five millions of the inhabitants of the island, 
and included every civilized soul. In a brief 
discussion, Mr. Roosevelt could not be ex- 
pected to mention such irrelevant details. 

Fortunately for Mr. Roosevelt, the lines of 
the "duty and destiny" business had been laid 
down before he succeeded President McKinley. 
''This belligerent, or more properly speaking, 
piratical way of looking at neighboring terri- 
tory, was very characteristic of the West, and 
was the root of 'manifest destiny.' " So had 
Historian Roosevelt written. When he took 
the helm of state the piracy was an accom- 
plished fact. We had arrived at "manifest 
destiny." President Roosevelt had only to re- 
tain the plunder and divide the spoils. 

For a presidential Mark Tapley, there was 



Roosevelt and the Republic 201 

much that was encouraging in the situation. 
Roosevelt forgot his historian's view of colon- 
ization. India and Egypt had trained up great 
soldiers for England. The Philippines might 
do the same for us. If there was anything the 
Republic was pining for, it was great soldiers. 
If America could only have a Caesar or a 
Napoleon, its future would be obvious enough. 

About this time our war for '"humanity" to 
rid the Western Hemisphere of ''Weylerism" 
had traveled the whole circle, and had returned 
upon Weyler's old trail. If Filipinos objected 
to being piously masticated as a preliminary 
to "benevolent assimilation," why we must 
teach them better. Gen. Jacob Smith, of the 
sulphurous appellation, told his subordinates 
to "kill everything over ten." They were to 
burn everything in sight. Conquer the place 
if it must first be made a howling wilderness. 
Majors Waller and Glenn tried to carry out 
the order literally. 

Half crazed by the tropical climate and the 
strange conditions of life, aroused by the sullen 
resistance of an elusive foe, American soldiers 
forgot their traditions of manly fighting. Even 
women and children suffered. Torture and 
murder went hand in hand with war. Major 
Waller and Lieutenant Arnold were caught 
red-handed. The discovery interfered some- 
what with their promotion. Gen. Jacob Smith, 
of the sulphurous appellation, was actually rep- 
rimanded. W^e have the impression that he 
was also fined. Even the gallant Chaffee was 



202 Roosevelt and the Republic 

not overnice in the methods he was willing to 
use to overcome the "enemy." 

Following one of Roosevelt's "investiga- 
tions" an officer who shot a Filipino in the 
back lost a number in his promotion order. 
Sentinels found it easier to shoot Filipino 
amigos than to try to understand them. These 
sentinels were warned against carelessness, but 
lost in no way by the practice. 

American soldiers whose traditions were 
theretofore the most manly on earth, engaged 
in the valorous pastime of placing Filipino pris- 
oners with hands tightly bound behind them on 
a slippery plank, pushing their feet from under 
them and watching them fall. Another mili- 
tary sport was standing Filipinos on their 
heads in a vessel of water and watching them 
strangle. Some were triced up and others 
poured full of water. 

Strangely enough, these highly elevating 
pastimes were concealed from the country. 
Dispatches from the Philippines were cen- 
sored to suit military tastes. Highly humorous 
administration newspapers in the United States 
said "real cute" things about the "aunties" who 
saw no cause for pride in a twentieth century 
Republic, in the van of civilization, reverting 
to the practices of Mediaeval Spain. 

All this, however, did not suffice to conquer 
the island men, and Gen. Bell finally put 
"Weylerism" in full force by establishing 
"reconcentration" camps. For Spain there 
must have been humor deliciously grim in 
seeing the much-heralded "war for humanity/' 



Roosevelt and the Republic 203 

degenerate in four short years into just "Wey- 
lerism." 

Self-righteous Anglo-Saxons are not good in 
seeing a joke when it is on themselves. The 
blackest crimes for other peoples are actions 
of great merit for Anglo-Saxons. They are 
too self-centered to realize their own hypo- 
crisy. President Roosevelt branded as "trait- 
ors" those who doubted the wisdom and the 
righteousness of the Gen. (Sulphurous) Jake 
Smith and the Gen. (Reconcentrado) Bell pro- 
gramme. Gen. Funston, with the glory of 
Aguinaldo's capture still upon him, referred to 
Senator Hoar as the man with a superheated 
conscience. President Roosevelt could not 
approve that. Roosevelt was the only man 
with full privilege to say contemptuous things 
and call ugly names. Funston "denied the 
interview." 

"The horrors and the treachery were the in- 
evitable outcome of the policy on which they 
(the British) had embarked. It can never be 
otherwise when a civilized government en- 
deavors to use as allies in war, savages whose 
acts it cannot control and for whose welfare it 
has no real concern." (Roosevelt's Winning 
of the West, Vol. 4, page 99.) To be sure, 
nothing like this could apply to our using 
"scouts" from among the most savage tribes 
of the Filipinos to run down the more civilized 
natives. 

The humane character of our warfare in the 
Philippines is indicated by the more recent 
incident at Mount Dajo. Only about six hun- 



204 Roosevelt and the Republic 

dred men, women and children, defending 
themselves with antiquated weapons, were 
penned upon the mountain top and wiped out 
almost as completely as the tender-hearted 
Sioux did Custer's devoted band. The differ- 
ence was that the Sioux fought against sol- 
diers with weapons as good as their own — not 
against women and children. Fifteen Ameri- 
cans were killed and sixty-five wounded in the 
Dajo fight. This tells one whether it was a 
battle or a massacre. 

Gen. Miles, head of the army in the early 
portion of Roosevelt's administration, sug- 
gested that if he were permitted to go to the 
islands he might secure peace without such 
drastic measures. Miles talked too much. 
Hadn't he helped to make public the "water 
cure" scandal. He was not the sort of mili- 
tary man to let loose in our island possessions. 
The world might know what was going on, to 
our shame and confusion. Gen. Miles re- 
mained at home — for the present. 

Finally there was "pacification." Mr. Taft 
said so. The pacification of exhaustion, death, 
starvation. (Mount Dajo massacre came long 
afterward.) Up to this time the government 
had been entirely autocratic, as autocratic as 
the government of Siberia, far more autocratic 
than the government of India, as autocratic as 
the government of Egypt. 

By presidential proclamation (imperial 
ukase, his majesty wills it) an American com- 
mission was appointed and given all power 
gver the Philippines, legislative, executive, 



Roosevelt and the Republic 205 

judicial. These aliens, imposed by an alien 
authority, assumed the power of life and 
death over the people of the Philppines. They 
assumed to give away their public resources, 
to regulate their affairs with exactly the same 
warrant that the Russians acted in Manchuria 
or the British in Egypt. Not for nearly four 
years did the American Congress temper in 
any degree the power of the American autocrat. 
With calm assurance of the Anglo-Saxon I- 
am-holier-than-thou quality, American citizens 
overlooked their own beam and grew excited 
over what Russia might intend to do in Man- 
churia. 

Urged forward by the pressure of the Exec- 
utive and the imperialistic newspaper claque, 
the United States Supreme Court, always on 
the side of what appears to it immediately the 
stronger force, decided that American officers 
deriving their power from the constitution 
were superior to the constitution and not 
bound by its limitations. In other words, they 
were properly autocrats. They could govern 
aliens, denying rights which Americans hold 
as fundamental. Woolsey did meritorious ser- 
vice in finding a way for Henry VIII. Riche- 
lieu served Louis well, the Grand Dukes are 
reasonably efficient in finding excuse and ave- 
nues for the autocracy of the czar, but con- 
sidering circumstances, the work of American 
ministers and courts was far more meritorious 
than the work of any of these. Neither Wool- 
sey, nor Richelieu, nor the grand dukes can 
compare with modest, unobtrusive Elihu Root. 



2o6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Thomas F. Ryan's friend, in finding a way. 
In a country whose very sanction is a state- 
ment that all men are created equal (with 
equal civic rights, or equal rights before the 
law), and are endowed naturally with inalien- 
able rights among which are life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness ; in a government with 
this declaration as a sanction and with a con- 
stitution adopted to secure the blessing of 
equal liberty, the finding of a sanction for pure 
autocracy one would suppose an awkward 
problem. It was easy enough for Mr. Root. 
By some hocus pocus which ordinary mortals 
are not supposed to understand, a president 
elected to carry out the will of a free people 
as expressed in their laws, becomes by that 
commission an autocrat over alien nations, gov- 
erning them according to his will. Verily have 
we progressed. 

Later Congress sanctioned the plan autocrat- 
ically installed. Why it needed such sanc- 
tion, or how Congress got power to give it 
sanction, or whence, under American institu- 
tions, remains as deep a mystery as the sanc- 
tion of the original ukase. Indeed that might 
by a pretty fiction have been posited upon 
military power, the right of the keenest sword, 
but we search in vain for a theory of con- 
gressional sanction. Congressmen will tell you 
it is just territorial government. Perhaps ! 

William A. Taft, who had gone to the Philip- 
pines as a representative of President McKin- 
ley, was later to become the first civil gov* 
ernor of the islands. Schools were started. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 207 

Railways were projected, to be built by gov- 
ernment aid but owned by individuals for indi- 
vidual profit, we Americans are so generous 
with our promoters. 

With true business foresight, Mr. Taft 
stood for laws permitting individuals and cor- 
porations to appropriate more generously the 
land of the Filipinos. If we were to exploit 
the natives and their islands, we should give 
opportunity for exploitation on a scale that 
was worth while. Sugar planters should be 
permitted to own 20,000 acres at least. Since 
Mr. Taft knows that prosperity comes from 
above down instead of from the bottom up, 
since it is founded upon the generosity of big 
business men rather than upon the industry of 
the masses, such an arrangement would do 
wonders for island prosperity. At least it 
would make these landowners prosperous, and 
that Avas a point gained. Now he wants land 
and mines opened indiscriminately to appro- 
priation by corporations or individuals. 

Under the benign American despotism the 
Filipinos could get everything they wanted ex- 
cept freedom and independence. They could 
enjoy all rights except the right of being men. 
Their good father would provide for and pro- 
tect them, if they would only continue good, 
tractable children, and mind what was said to 
them — just as the Czar provides for and pro- 
tects his children. There was still disorder in 
the islands, as Mount Dajo later demonstrated, 
but the natives still in arms had become 
ladrones (robbers). Many Americans, the 



2o8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

English found, turned "robber" at the time of 
the American revokition. 

*'We are often told that the best of all gov- 
ernments is a benevolent despotism. Oliver's 
failure is a sufficient commentary upon the dic- 
tum of the parlor doctrinaires." (Roosevelt's 
Cromwell, page 236.) 

Recently the Filipinos have been GIVEN 
an assembly. Filipino suffrage is about as 
carefully guarded as the good Czar guards the 
suffrage of the electors for the Russian Douma, 
and for exactly the same reason, to prevent 
a true expression of public sentiment toward 
the rulers of the country. 

"But it must be noted that the difficulty in 
the Hawaiian Islands resulted not so much 
from the establishment of a popular assembly 
as from the undue extension of the electoral 
franchise. In the Philippines the franchise has 
been restricted and duly guarded. 

"I am not blind to the troubles that the 
legislative assembly would doubtless bring to 
the executive and the commission, in rousing 
public discussion over unimportant matters 
that now pass without notice." (Civil Gov- 
ernment in the Philippines, page 95.) 

Notwithstanding the curtaining of the suf- 
frage and the almost absolute lack of power 
in the Filipino assembly, this assembly, like 
the earlier Russian parliaments, is over- 
whelmingly in favor of independence. 

Good Mr. Taft, Roosevelt's portly war sec- 
retary, has made several visits to the islands. 
He says that the government i^ going to give 



Roosevelt and the Republic 209 

Filipinos self-government when they are ready 
for it. President Roosevelt says that we can- 
not expect Filipinos to arrive immediately at 
the condition in political evolution that the 
men of America have attained after thirty gen- 
erations of effort. Are the Filipinos then to 
wait for thirty generations before they are 
given self-government? 

Unless the Filipinos prove different from all 
other peoples, unless laws of human progress 
are revised for their especial benefit, neither 
thirty nor three hundred generations of alien 
rule will prepare the Filipinos for self-govern- 
ment. If President Roosevelt would consult 
Historian Pvoosevelt and harken to what he 
says, the historian would tell the executive, as 
he has told us in effect at the beginning of the 
chapter, that self-government was never 
GIVEN by any people to any other, except by 
leaving them to their own devices. 

Our historian would have pointed out how 
the world has divided itself into scores of self- 
governing nations, each, if left alone, with a 
government suited approximately to its own 
needs. As with the American Indians, and 
the Saxon tribes, the earliest and most primi- 
tive, as well as the highest, is democratic self- 
government. At least a score of brands of 
self-government have appeared among men, 
and a government of and by Filipinos, while 
it may in no sense mount to the perfection of a 
government of and by Americans for Ameri- 
cans, may be as truly self-government. A gov- 



210 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ernment by Americans for the Filipinos cail 
never be self-government. 

"The way to resume, is just to resume," said 
an American statesman, referring to resump- 
tion of specie payments. The way to have 
self-government in the Philippines is just to 
have it. Leave the Filipinos to their own de- 
vices. They will do the rest. This can be 
done in this year of our Lord, 1908, as well 
as in 2208 or 2508. 

All this Historian Roosevelt would tell 
President Roosevelt, if President Roosevelt 
would seek a serious interview. Within six 
months this country could arrange a guaran- 
teed neutrality for the Philippines and cut 
loose without loss of prestige and with infinite 
gain for this nation and for the Filipino peo- 
ple. This would, it is true, leave less opportu- 
nity for American statesmen ''to come out 
strong." 

Bitter, as the natives view it, has been the 
injustice of American rule in the Philippines, 
bloody has been the American occupation. 
These natives forget that the loss that has 
come to the Philippines and the humiliation 
they have undergone is as nothing to that 
which the people of America have borne and 
suffered. We do not refer to financial loss, 
although this has been almost inconceivable 
in extent. We may remember that immediately 
before the Spanish war we were spending less 
than fifty millions of dollars annually upon 
the army and the navy, where we are now 
spending over two hundred millions. Four- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 21 1 

fifths of the increase in naval expenditure is 
directly traceable to the Philippines. Senator 
Henry M. Teller, of Colorado, and George L. 
Wellington, of Maryland, former senator, esti^ 
mate that the Philippines have already cost this 
nation eight hundred millions of dollars. The 
loss in life has been 20,000, with 50,000 addi- 
tional men utterly corrupted. Our outlay is 
not likely to decrease. Our national defenses, 
like a chain, are no stronger than their weak- 
est link. A possession six thousand miles away 
must require ten times the regular military 
force to defend it that is required by the nation 
at home. This is accentuated when the enemy 
is close to that possession. Military power is 
required to keep the colony in subjection. The 
subjecting force and the defending force must 
be different from a home-defense army. It 
must be an army of mercenaries, who make 
fighting a profession, like the Roman legion- 
aries. Alien dependencies are inseparable from 
crushing military establishments. 

Mere cost, as the Filipinos must readily see, 
is but trifling as compared with the cost to 
America of its colonies. If the money loss had 
been eight billions, instead of one-tenth 01 
that sum, it must still loom not as the largest 
item. In destroying the Filipino Republic 
and subjecting its people we have made ex- 
cellent progress in undermining the founda- 
tions of our own liberties. Already they are 
crumbling away. Filipinos must not forget 
that Americans suffer with them for the im- 
perialism of their comrnon rulers. 



'212 Roosevelt and the Republic ' 

Ten years ago America held aloft the bea- 
con light of liberty. Like the pillar of fire to 
the hosts of Israel, that light guided the foot- 
steps of liberty-loving peoples over all the 
earth. It inspired deeds of patriotism. Of 
free government upon the earth, it was the 
hope and promise. In the white radiance of 
its chastening flame cowered tyrants every- 
where, afraid to strike. 

That light has gone out and great is the 
darkness. Patriots in other lands grope pain- 
fully, fearfully, searching for the guiding light 
extinguished forever. 

At home we see the ideals of a century 
abandoned. Our immortal Declaration of In- 
dependence has become to the greatest of 
Americans but a string of meaningless plati- 
tudes. If the bell be broken, it gives forth a 
hollow sound. Unless we have the ideals of 
liberty within us, not even a Declaration of 
Independence can find within us a responsive 
chord. We have lost our place among nations 
as the government as high in ideals as it was 
righteous in action. Instead we are just a 
military power, piling ship on ship and gun 
on gun in the weird devil's dance of imperial- 
ism. Faint glimpses only have we of liberty 
and righteousness as we struggle onward in 
darkness with the military millstone about our 
necks, the millstone that has been submerging 
also, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, England 
and the other military powers for half a cen- 
tury. We have gone back to the ideal of force, 
back to the ideal of our hairy paleolithic an- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 213 

cestor as he snarled in his cave and drank the 
hot blood of his victim. Ours is again the 
ideal that knows no brother, that since the dim 
twilight of civilization in the prehistoric cave 
has filled the world with war, rapine and 
strife. 

Friend of the Philippines, we realize that 
from Rome to England every nation that has 
tried imperialism has gone down to death under 
its weight. England, with its caste, its un- 
employed, its paupers, its hooligans, seems to 
be traveling the same road as Rome, bowed 
down under the weight of imperialism. Vet 
England's is an enlightened, a decentralized 
imperialism. Ours is the imperialism of van- 
ished Rome. Brothers of the Philippines wo 
bow our heads with you in sorrow, shame and 
humiliation, for we realiize that your loss fs 
our loss, your crucifixion our crucifixion. But 
you know the meaning of false pride. Follow- 
ing our heroic president we must march grimly 
on, deviating not from the road that leads to 
death. 



214 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XX. 

CUBA BECOMES FREE — ALMOST. 

In dealing with Cuba the United States has 
been far more fortunate than in dealing with 
the Philippines. In the very beginning, before 
it had fallen from grace, it put aside the temp- 
tation. 

''The United States hereby disclaims any dis- 
position or intention to exercise sovereignty, 
jurisdiction or control over said island, except 
for the pacification thereof, and asserts its de- 
termination when that is accomplished, to leave 
the government and control of the island to its 
people." 

So ran the resolution of intervention. It 
looks sufficiently specific. The meaning of it 
seemed then sufficiently plain. This country 
was to drive the Spaniards out of Cuba, see 
that order was maintained while the Cubans 
organized their government and then leave 
them to work out their own salvation. 

Bitter was the heartburning felt in the blase 
America of 1900 over this sophomoric declara- 
tion of 1898. But it was too plain and specific 
to be ignored altogether. If it were not for 
this declaration this country would undoubt- 
edly have swallowed Cuba. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 215 

As to the administration of the island, it was 
easier, because the majority of the Cuban peo- 
ple, at first, at least, trusted our good faith and 
disinterestedness, Filipinos were deprived of 
the possibility of such trust. But the admin- 
istration was much the same — merely autocra- 
tic. Being closer to our shores, we have known 
more about it. Shameless attempts at exploit- 
ation were made. To some extent they suc- 
ceeded. Postal matters in Cuba took on a 
rank odor. So high-minded a gentleman as 
Bishop Canler, of Atlanta, made some ugly 
accusations against Gen. Leonard Wood, the 
Cuban governor. He had fastened upon the 
Cuban people against their will a gambling 
concession for ten years, accepting in appre- 
ciation of his work a gift of silver service worth 
several thousand dollars from men who would 
benefit by the concession. This was just one 
instance of exploitation. 

Gen. Wood had a free hand. He spent 
money lavishly without the necessity of ac- 
counting for it. Public funds maintained at 
Washington a Cuban lobby, directed and sup- 
ported by the Governor General. Possibly 
everything was all clean and pure. It had 
every appearance of being just the opposite. 
If entirely honorable, as we may hope they 
were. Wood methods were unfortunate. Worse 
than that, they were directed toward unworthy 
ends. 

After all this is not an important phase of 
the Cuban regime. The wrong of it and the 
shame of it was satrapy government. 



21 6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Reluctantly did the United States let go of 
Cuba, even in the face of its unequivocal 
pledge. Had President McKinley served out 
his term there is doubt as to whether the 
withdrawal of the American troops from Cuba 
would ever have been accomplished. Presi- 
dent McKinley's administration had a somno- 
lent effect upon the American conscience not 
enjoyed by the administration of President 
Roosevelt. Worthy potentate Wood at length 
left the island to pursue his course under his 
lucky star. The Cubans got a president and 
an assembly. But America could not quite live 
up to its pledge. Deterioration in public char- 
acter had become too drastic. An American 
string was tied to Cuba as the Piatt amend- 
ment. Cuba was left a nation largely free, but 
still under tutelage. 

Before Americans had withdrawn they had 
aroused serious suspicion in Cuba. So serious 
was this suspicion that Cuba leaned toward 
Great Britain and other foreign friends, as was 
shown in its treaty with England. Sugar Trust 
influences prevented the island from getting 
from America what the islanders considered 
trade justice. It looked as though Cuba might 
break entirely away and become really inde- 
pendent. Pressure applied at the right spot 
prevented such a denouement. Concessions by 
Congress put the Cubans in a better mind. 

American intrigue had not ceased, although 
to the credit of the administration, be it said, 
it was not official intrigue. Elections were 
manipulated, a clique got control of the gov- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 217 

ernment, and the fires of insurrection were 
kindled. President Palma, headstrong enough 
in cHnging to conscienceless political advan- 
tage, showed a broad and deep yellow streak, 
if in fact he was not a traitor to his Cuba 
scheming to destroy its independence and place 
it under American control. At all events he 
seems to have asked the President of the 
United States for troops to support his rule. 

American marines landed. They were pulled 
back and pushed forward again. Secretary of 
War Taft went to Cuba as representative of 
President Roosevelt, autocrat of Cuba and the 
Philippines. This nation had guaranteed 
Cuban "independence," and, of course, govern- 
ment by an alien autocrat was "maintaining 
the independence of Cuba !" just as I might pre- 
serve another's liberty by throwing him into 
jail. 

Thus has been started the delectable game 
of football, with Cuba as the missile. It is 
free and not free. Independent and not so in- 
dependent after all. It may govern itself un- 
less the President of the United States decides 
that he can do the job better as an autocrat, 
through a satrap supported by the military 
power of the United States. Where anything 
except might of arm gives sanction to this ar- 
rangement, goodness only knows. 

In the light of our experience, there seems 
to be but one way of dealing with Cuba. Amer- 
ica must cut it loose entirely without the Piatt 
amendment or other string, tell the rest of the 
.world that Cuba is neutral territory, and there 



2i8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

shall be no trespass, and leave the island and 
its people to work out their own salvation. Or 
we must take Cuba into our union of states 
with full political rights. Governing by mili- 
tary pro-consuls, personal representatives of 
President of the United States, autocrat of 
Cuba, is a very dangerous arrangement for the 
people of the United States, and is a trifle dis- 
concerting to the Cubans. Cuba can hardly 
bear it. This country cannot permit it. But a 
short step from Autocrat of Cuba may be Auto- 
crat of the United States. Not necessarily in 
name. Indeed that is a remote possibility. An 
autocrat may be an autocrat just as much 
while still called president. President Roose- 
velt certainly can appreciate such a possibility. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 219 



CHAPTER XXI. 

BATTLING WITH THE RAILWAY 

Fortunately President Roosevelt does not 
permit his innate modesty to interfere with his 
taking up and solving public problems which 
less efficient men have vainly struggled to dis- 
pose of. A striking instance is his action with 
regard to railway rates. His party in the cam- 
paign of 1904 was silent as the grave upon rail- 
way matters. Not a word upon the subject 
appeared in the party platform. Roosevelt's 
speech of acceptance did not refer to a railway 
problem. 

It has been intimated that he was asked by 
railway interests to take issue with the opposi- 
tion platform upon that theme. He was ex- 
pected to come out unequivocally against 
meddling with the railways. But certain rail- 
way interests did not meet expectations in 
yielding him support, and President Roosevelt 
remained silent, ominously so. 

In the platform of the opposing party rail- 
ways played an important part. There was a 
distinct pledge that if Democracy had proved 
successful the powers of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission would be increased so that 
the wrongs of the shipping and the traveling 



220 Roosevelt and the Republic 

public would be righted. This Democratic 
declaration followed two other national Demo- 
cratic platforms in that regard. 

This platform and all its 'Vagaries" was re- 
jected by a vote quite as decisive as had been 
given in a national election in recent years. If 
the verdict of the country meant anything, it 
meant that the powers of the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission ought not to be enlarged. 
Yet in his message immediately after the elec- 
tion President Roosevelt adopted the policy of 
the defeated Democrats. The Interstate Com- 
merce Commission must be given power to fix 
a rate, and it must remain fixed until changed 
by the courts. 

President Roosevelt had a great joke upon 
the people of the country. They had decided 
against railway-rate legislation, but he knew 
what they wanted better than they did and de- 
cided for them that they should have it. They 
thought they had cast aside the Democrats and 
all their works and pomps, only to find a car- 
dinal Democratic policy a cardinal Roosevelt 
policy. The position was undoubtedly taken 
deliberately, for President Roosevelt has re- 
peatedly written down his contempt for the 
people of the governing class who will heed 
the will of a majority in deciding upon state 
policies. 

Sometimes this principle may be used with 
awkward results. The next President may de- 
cide that the thing which the public pines for 
is a restoration of the old National Bank of 
the last century, and even though the people 



Roosevelt and the Republic ^2l 

have declared against it, he may get up a news- 
paper claque and dragoon Congress into pass- 
ing the bill. Why not? President Roosevelt 
has made the precedent. 

President Roosevelt selected the issue cun- 
ningly. A dozen states were at that moment 
pushing the reform. Shippers everywhere 
were becoming indignant over rank discrimin- 
ation and conscienceless gouging. They had 
for years been fighting the iniquity in courts 
before state legislatures and before the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission. Even though 
in the indeterminate voting upon blanket plat- 
forms, the railway problem had been entirely 
lost sight of, there was, no doubt, a strong 
public sentiment in favor of having something 
done. In addition, it would give several bad 
half-hours to railroad people who had not in 
the past campaign come to the support of 
Roosevelt with sufficient heartiness. Tariff re- 
form, too — that troublesome perennial issue — ■ 
might be sidetracked by making railways the 
cardinal issue. 

President Roosevelt was no more silent 
about this new issue than about some of the 
other things he had undertaken since and be- 
fore. His journalistic claque joined vociferous- 
ly in the clamor. Like his ''original discovery 
of the ten commandments," Roosevelt was the 
only originator of the railway rate proposition. 
That it had been a Democratic football for 
years, did not count. 

Railway rate reformers took the President 
seriously. Private and quasi-public investiga- 



222 Roosevelt and the Republic 

tion of rebating and discrimination had 
aroused some of the American fighting blood 
to the boiling point. State agitation had made 
smooth the way to public opinion. Many were 
thinking railway rates. Agitators took advan- 
tage of the Rooseveltian newspaper claque to 
rip loose stories of railway wrongdoing. These 
stories were sown broadcast. Soon the coun- 
try was talking railway rates. 

Congress was skeptical. It was not going to 
he stampeded into railway rate legislation. No 
mandate had come from the country through 
the proper channels. Congress was noi so sure 
it had a right to tlout the will of the majority 
expressed at the polls, or to accept executive 
and newspaper vociferation as ''public senti- 
ment." 

In fact Congress had done little in the pre- 
ceding four years but create new executive bu- 
reaus. These bureaus had done wonderful ser- 
vice in creating work for the public printery 
and creating week-end sensations for the news- 
papers, but the business of the government 
moved on no more swiftly. In fact each bu- 
reau had its own kedge anchor, dropped out 
to keep things stationary. 

The session passed without railway rate leg- 
islation. Measures had been presented to Con- 
gress. There were hearings without end. 
Conditions were disclosed which indicated 
clearly enough that there was need of some 
sort of solution for the railway problem. There 
the thing ended — for the time. 

President Roosevelt was well pleased. He 



Roosevelt and the Republic 223 

had not before in years hit upon a device equal- 
ly capable of raising sustained clamor the 
country over. Railway rate recommendations 
were given first column, first page, in his new 
annual treatise on universal knowledge, some- 
times called a message. By this time the jour- 
nalistic claque had forgotten that anybody be- 
side Roosevelt had ever had an original 
thought upon railway-rate legislation. It was 
a Roosevelt policy, copyrighted and protected 
by domestic and foreign patents. "No tres- 
pass" signs were placed all over the new pro- 
nunciamento. 

Dr. Albert Shaw of the "Review of Re- 
views," chief claquer, hit upon an ingenious de- 
vice. The people of the country, he said, had 
spoken unmistakably in favor of having Con- 
gress carry out "President Roosevelt's poli- 
cies," presumably past, present and to come. 
To be sure, no voter at the last election knew 
that railway rate legislation was a "Roosevelt 
policy." But Roosevelt has since established 
ownership to this railway rate problem. 

Pious old Joseph Cannon, Speaker of the 
house of Representatives, consumed as he al- 
ways is with righteous ardor in battling for the 
people's cause, dragooned the railway rate bill 
through the House. That same House of Rep- 
resentatives would just as quickly have passed 
a bill for the canonization of bullfrogs, if the 
journalistic claque had convinced the members 
that "public sentiment" (ascertained through 
vociferous iteration by the most noisy) de- 
manded it, and it was wished for by President 



224 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Roosevelt and ''Uncle Joe." For be it known 
that in these later days, the House of Repre- 
sentatives has become in practice an aggrega- 
tion of automatic mimes used in recording the 
will of a little self-perpetuating group of which 
Joseph G. Cannon is the center. Journalistic 
clamor, White House influence and the lash 
of ''Uncle Joe's" whips, are the three forces 
now ruling the popular branch of the national 
Congress. 

For the stolid old Senate, however, there is 
no god but Mammon, and Aldrich is prophet. 
Consequently, through the Senate the railway 
rate bill moved with painful slowness. One 
of the grandest battles of forensic eloquence 
witnessed in a generation raged for months. 
Great lawyers, taking up the narrowest point 
they could find in the whole controversy, 
hurled hundreds of thousands of legal missiles 
at one another. Senators Foraker, Spooner, 
Knox, Bailey, Rayner, one after another ex- 
pounded the law and the prophets in extenua- 
tion or condemnation of the thing about to be 
done. So the battle raged until the wind-bat- 
teries had literally blown themselves out. 

But the bill moved on. Aldrich was worried, 
although still prophet. As a master stroke he 
forced upon Senator Tillman, the dearest foe 
of the President, the task of reporting to the 
Senate what was supposed to be the Presi- 
dent's pet measure. It was hardly less of an 
affront from Aldrich to the President than 
was the President's earlier insult to Senator 
Tillman. Senator Tillman, hot-blooded as he 



Roosevelt and the Republic 22< 



»/ 



was, forgot the gratuitous slap in the face that 
the President had once given him, and reported 
the bill v^ith favorable recommendations. Al- 
drich's trick proved very small politics. 

Finding that Tillman's generous manhood 
had destroyed the force of his strategy, Aldrich 
tried a more subtle assault upon the measure. 
There was still time to draw its teeth, and in 
this sort of an attack, he could have the sup- 
port of numerous senators who would not 
openly defy "public sentiment." Senators 
Spooner and Knox had raised a sufficient con- 
stitutional dust to cover any sort of political 
manipulation. President Roosevelt had con- 
ferences with the friends of the bill and be- 
came convinced that some of the Republican 
senators were in a plot, by amendments, to de- 
stroy its effectiveness. He could not count 
upon sufficient votes within the party to pass 
the bill in effective form. The President con- 
sidered the cause well nigh lost. 

So desperate did the situation look to him 
that he sent Former Senator Chandler, Sena- 
tor Tillman's close personal friend, as an emis- 
sary to Senator Tillman, the President's 
old enemy, and made overtures for an alliance 
between Democratic and Rooseveltian forces 
in the Senate to save the integrity of the meas- 
ure. Spooner, Knox and Foraker, the Presi- 
dent told Chandler, were making assaults upon 
the measure through clever amendments based 
upon "constitutional" points. Their manipula- 
tions threatened to leave the bill a mere 
shadow of itself. 



22S Roosevelt and the Republic 

Senator Tillman remembered the Greeks 
bearing gifts and fought warily of the propo- 
sition. His old friend Chandler reassured him. 
Tillman would see Senator Joseph Bailey of 
Texas, who was then floor leader of the Demo- 
crats, in the Senate. Senator Bailey was even 
more suspicious than Tillman, but he, too, was 
assured that the proposition was in good faith. 

An interview was arranged between Attor- 
ney-General Moody, representing the Presi- 
dent, and Tillman and Bailey representing the 
Democratic senators. The three men talked 
and came to a virtual agreement upon the 
scope of the amendments to be supported. 
Democrats would support an efficient amend- 
ment to the rate bill. President Roosevelt 
would, on his part, hold out for an amendment 
limiting court review to the question of ultra 
vires (exceeding of power) by the commission, 
and the violation of constitutional rights. 
Bailey and Tillman also wanted an amendment 
prohibiting interlocutory injunctions. The at- 
torney-general was not prepared to say wheth- 
er the latter amendment was within the power 
of Congress'. 

Senator Tillman had begun to revise his esti- 
mate of the President. The gratuitous slap 
that Roosevelt had given him on the occasion 
of Prince Henry's visit rankled. Tillman had 
always felt that deep in their natures there was 
a fundamental antagonism between him and 
President Roosevelt, as fundamental as that 
between the wolf and the sheep dog. Their 
sentiments and ideals, he considered, were war- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 22J 

ring, irreconcilable. He had doubted from the 
first whether any good could come of such an 
alliance, but it seemed as though he had been 
mistaken. 

Several interviews had already taken place 
between Tillman and Chandler and Chandler 
and Roosevelt. Bailey had not seen Chandler, 
nor had Tillman seen the President, but now 
that they had met with a member of Roose- 
velt's cabinet on the same subject, they felt 
that there could be no longer any room for 
error. The preliminary interviews had extend- 
ed from March 31 to April 14. 

A second interview took place between Till- 
man and Bailey and Attorney-General Moody. 
A written memorandum of the amendments 
agreed upon was prepared by Moody and sub- 
mitted to the Democrats. It was revised and 
submitted to President Roosevelt. His ap- 
proval was forthcoming. On that basis Bailey 
and Tillman would furnish twenty-six Demo- 
cratic votes. Roosevelt's party must furnish 
twenty. I 

All this is of record, placed there in open 
session of the august Senate and printed in the 
Congressional Record. What went on behind 
the Republican scenes is not a matter of writ- 
ten history. Possibly President Roosevelt 
rounded out in this case the tactics by which 
he had captured Senator Piatt and the New 
York gubernatorial nomination eight years be- 
fore. Roosevelt's friends might have told Sen- 
ator Aldrich that the bill could be passed with- 
out him, and if it was, it would go upon the 



228 Roosevelt and the Republic 

statute books stronger than it had come from 
the House of Representatives. 

It was high time for Aldrich to act. He act- 
ed. On the afternoon of May 4, while Senators 
Tillman and Bailey were still dreaming dreams 
of Rooseveltian alliances and rate amendments 
limiting court reviews and interlocutory in- 
junctions, President Roosevelt was bidding the 
gentlemen of the press to come and listen to 
what he had to say. 

Roosevelt told the correspondents that he 
was fully satisfied with the Allison amendment, 
a mere declaration of the right of the courts to 
review the work of the commission, giving the 
broadest sort of authority — authority to try the 
case de novo, if thought expedient. It was 
silent upon interlocutory injunctions. The 
things which Roosevelt told Chandler he would 
stand for ''unalterably," he now characterized 
as of no consequence. 

When newspaper correspondents told Bailey 
and Tillman what had taken place, it almost 
took away the breath of the good Democratic 
senators. Tillman and Bailey, full of wrath, 
sought out Chandler where he was dining at 
the Portland. Question marks were written all 
over their countenances. Would Chandler ex- 
plain? Why was it that this "right about 
face" on the part of the military President had 
come stealthily and unheralded, like a thief in 
the night? Was it not their due, since their aid 
was sought, that when their aid was spurned, 
they should be given some intimation of that 
change? 



Roosevelt and the Republic 229' 

Chandler had not been taken into the Presi- 
dent's confidence, upon the new tack. All 
three sought out Attorney-General Moody. 

Was that the fact? No, he had heard noth- 
ing of the change of front on the part of the 
President. Moody was going South to rest — 
just starting for a train at that moment. He 
did not tarry to hear the whole story. 

All over the broad land on the morrow the 
story was sown broadcast. Aldrich smiled. 
Bailey, Tillman and Chandler felt a sudden 
tremendous slump in their market price. 

For a whole week Tillman stewed in the 
Senate in silent rage. Then his righteous 
wrath broke forth. Tillman knew his weak- 
ness and to save the day and his temper, he 
came into the Senate with a written statement 
detailing all that had happened from the time 
that the President's private secretary, William 
Loeb, had bidden Chandler to the White 
House to the eventful evening when Roosevelt 
had assembled the correspondents and said 
something important to them. 

In his story was the charge of the President 
that Knox, Spooner and Foraker were bent 
upon emasculating the rate measure by amend- 
ments, and that a sufficient number of Re- 
publicans could not be marshalled to defeat 
their plan. Tillman's statement, although dig- 
nified and temperate in language, did not pic- 
ture President Roosevelt in an enviable light. 

Friend Henry Cabot Lodge, the same who 
with Bellamy Storer was ready to vouch for 
Tom Watson, got the White House telephone 



230 Roosevelt and the Republic 

and told Roosevelt what was going on up the 
avenue. Chandler said: — Lodge repeated the 
statement about Knox, Spooner and Foraker. 
Did the President say it? 

No ; the thing was an unqualified and delib- 
erate falsehood. 

The Ambassador of the White House to Em- 
peror Tillman of the Senate had in a few short 
minutes been catalogued in the Ananias Club 
with Thomas Jefferson and the whole line of 
prevaricators from his time to that year of our 
Lord 1906. 

With only a two-days' interval, President 
Roosevelt in a letter to Senator Allison gave 
his version of the tale. Chandler, the busy- 
body, had been sent by Tillman with syco- 
phantic solicitation to beg the good President 
to combine with the Democrats in order to 
take the rate bill out of the hands of its Re- 
publican foes. Graciously the President con- 
sented to hear Chandler in Tillman's behalf. 
He would, if necessary, have conferred with 
Tillman personally, so liberal had he become. 
But not for one moment did he take the Demo- 
cratic view. The amendments under discus- 
sion were of no consequence. Allison's de- 
claration, colorless and unnecessary though it 
may be, covered the whole case. The Presi- 
dent was in full accord with Knox and 
Spooner. In fact the statement of the Presi- 
dent indicated that Chandler, Bailey and Till- 
man had dreamed the same bad dream about 
railway rates and the President. This dream 



Roosevelt and the Republic 231 

seems also to have infected Attorney-General 

Moody. 

There were but two things which seemed to 
give positive proof that the episode was not 
the stuff of which dreams are made — ^the 
Moody memorandum, setting forth exactly 
what Bailey and Tillman asserted it set forth, 
and the letter of Secretary Loeb to Chandler 
inviting him to conference in the White House, 
showing upon its face that the President and 
not Tillman had first brought Chandler into 
the rate business and used him as an emissary. 

Surrounded as the President's statement was 
with an unmistakable air of coy improbability 
— for everyone who knows Tillman knows that 
he would take as great pleasure in opening ne- 
gotiations with Roosevelt at that time as he 
would in cutting off his good right arm— it 
taxed the reputation for veracity which had 
been built up by the President among those 
who did not know him, to make his version at 
all convincing. The dispassionate historian re- 
viewing the documents several years hence will 
find the record so baffling that he will probably 
accord to the President the privilege claimed 
for him by his admirers of making ''facts" to 
suit the interests of the administration. 

Looking at this episode in the light of the 
methods pursued by President Roosevelt in 
getting the New York nomination for governor 
and in altering and editing the correspondence 
between Roosevelt and Harriman so as to de- 
ceive the public into the belief that Harriman 
had initiated negotiations with Roosevelt in- 



2^2 Roosevelt and the Republic 

stead of, as was the fact, that Roosevelt had 
opened negotiations with Harriman, one is in- 
clined to be rather charitable toward Senator 
Chandler for his lapses in truthfulness. 

One glaring fact stands out boldly in all the 
mass of controversy — Roosevelt again proved 
himself a partisan. It was the third important 
test with him where the interests of country 
and party clashed. As in the other two cases, 
the interests of the party were considered para- 
mount. He would prefer a weaker rate meas- 
ure to giving Democrats credit for strengthen- 
ing it. There is still room for doubt whether 
Roosevelt would choose the society of Hades 
with a governor general who believed in the 
tenets of Alexander Hamilton, rather than oc- 
cupy a celestial throne among the democratic 
followers of Thomas Jefferson. We are in- 
clined to give the President the benefit of the 
doubt. 

After the Allison letter the administration 
quickly changed the subject. Senator Bailey, 
said the Rooseveltian journalistic kitchen cab- 
inet in an inspired article, was responsible for 
the Chandler-Tillman episode. Neither Chand- 
ler, nor Tillman, nor the President trusted 
Bailey. They thought the man from Texas 
was also trying to kill the bill with amend- 
ments. Bailey used the same sort of compli- 
mentary language toward the author of this 
story as the President had used toward his 
quondam friend Chandler. Tillman corrobor- 
ated Bailey. 

Republicans lined up again under their old 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2^2 

leader, Aldrich, and voted for the Allison 
amendment. Then they voted down every 
amendment intended to strengthen the bill, in- 
cluding the amendments curtailing court re- 
view. Thus amended, the bill passed by an al- 
most unanimous vote, the advocates of these 
amendments considering the bill without them 
better than no bill at all. Senators Pettus and 
Morgan on the Democratic side, and Foraker 
among the Republicans, voted against the bill. 

Probably not in the recent history of the 
government has the legislative mountain la- 
bored so long and so painfully to bring forth 
so small a legislative mouse. For eighteen 
months the new law has been in effect, and it 
has enabled the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion to keep good its record of uninterrupted 
uselessness proudly sustained over the score or 
so of years that had gone before. True, the 
new law has meant more commissioners, more 
salary for each, and more agents and more 
work for the government printer — some addi- 
tional tons of ''reports" which nobody reads. 
The anti-pass amendment, an after thought, 
the fruit of the agitation of the strenuous Con- 
gressman Baker, has had some effect, regard- 
less of the commission. But if any appreciable 
body of railway rates has been made lower 
through the workings of the new rate law, that 
fact has wholly escaped an observing public. 
Rebates were already doomed, but not through 
Federal bureau activity. 

The commission was not given power to do 
the one thing it Is fitted to do, make a valuation 



234 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of railway property as a basis for determining 
the justness of rates. That was a plan of Sena- 
tor La Follette, the insurgent, and just at that 
stage Senator Spooner, an unselfish and loyal 
popular champion and reformer, was the 
mouthpiece of the Roosevelt administration. 
Measures supported by La Follette had short 
shrift. 

Railway rates are to be changed only after 
protest and hearing. Our hundreds of thou- 
sands of rates would require commission sit- 
tings of a half-century to have a perceptible 
influence upon railway rates. If the sense of 
American humor had not been lost, the whole 
thing would appear deliciously absurd. 

Its merit is said to be in establishing the 
right of the government to regulate railway 
rates through a commission. That right was 
conceded for ten years, when the Supreme 
Court put an end to the concession. What the 
Supreme Court may do in future no man can 
guess. Rebate prosecutions thus far have been 
under the old law. 

Some day this plethoric commission, with its 
bureaucratic irresponsibility and its bales of 
red tape, will prove an excellent barrier to the 
solution of the railway problem by state or 
nation. Then the people of the United States 
may find far more trouble in getting rid of the 
cumbersome bureau than they have found in 
giving it power. If the commission idea had 
in it anything of vital service in dealing with 
the railway problem, this fact would probably 



Roosevelt and the Republic 235 

have been at least hinted at by the results of 
its twenty-one years of life. 

America has lost the power of meeting new 
problems in a new way, or of learning from 
wiser nations how to meet them. Like a case 
of small-pox, its railway problem must run its 
course, through legislative ointment and com- 
mission bandages. The country will finally 
come out with the marks of the disease upon 
it. We can afford to bear a little pitting if it 
teaches something new. 



236 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XXII. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM AS PRESIDENT. 

As President, Roosevelt's influence upon 
civil service reform has been unique. With 
technical knowledge, gained as commissioner, 
of all the highways and by-ways, the back 
doors, secret panels and side gateways of the 
service, he was able to mold it to his will. 

The back doors, the secret panels, the side 
gateways, have all been closed and locked. 
President Roosevelt alone carries a pass key. 

President McKinley, the Spanish war, and 
other subsequent imperialistic adventures, had 
dealt the merit system blow after blow. Sus- 
pensions, exceptions, transfers of unclassified 
and temporary employees to the classified ser- 
vice, had undermined its integrity. Hostile 
commissioners tended to make the whole thing 
a farce. Here came in Roosevelt's reservation. 
He balked here at the policy of McKinley, al- 
though he would not acknowledge to the coun- 
try the decimation of the merit system which 
had taken place preceding 1901. Roosevelt 
stuck heroically to the declaration so dramati- 
cally made in Buffalo that autumn day. Never- 
theless, for the past six years, most of the en- 
ergy exerted by Roosevelt in improving the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 237 

civil service has been w^asted in recovering the 
ground lost by his immediate predecessor. For 
practical purposes, Grover Cleveland had ap- 
plied the merit system to the civil service al- 
most as fully as it has yet been applied by 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

In 1903, seven years after Grover Cleveland 
had made his sweeping order of May 6, 1896, 
the executive service had grown to 271,169, and 
but 134,000 places were classified. In other 
words, practically one-half were unclassified. 
This was almost exactly the unclassified per- 
centage in 1896. There was a patronage of 
134,000 places, which was far in excess of 1896 
or any other previous time. 

Since that time the executive civil service 
has expanded as never before. Foreign posses- 
sions mean executive satraps and their under- 
lings. Canal construction, as the President 
may direct, means other thousands. July i, 
1906, the service included 326,850 places. Of 
these, 184,178 were classified and 142,672 un- 
classified. This represents the greatest num- 
ber of unclassified executive Federal employees 
ever recorded in the United States. Such 
growth of the civil list is quite out of propor- 
tion to the growth of the population. There was 
a modest increase of about thirty thousand or 
about twenty per cent, in executive places from 
1886 to 1896, with an increase in population of 
about fourteen millions or approximately twen- 
ty-five per cent. From 1896 to 1906 there was 
an increase of 148,000 or eighty per cent, in the 
number of executive employees, with an in- 



238 Roosevelt and the Republic 

crease in population of scarcely thirty per cent. 
In other words the increase in the executive 
civil list was fourfold greater with approxi- 
mately the same increase in population. The 
percentage of classified to unclassified places 
has increased but eight per cent, since Cleve- 
land. 

Abiises, too, have crept in. Temporary ap- 
pointment amounted to 14,256 in 1905. These 
were of such nature as to admit of being used 
as spoils. It is a clever way of beating the 
civil service. Thousands of places in the new 
forces and new services organized under 
Roosevelt were spoils of office when the ap- 
pointments were originally made, if they are 
not, indeed, spoils of office still. 

During the year 1905-6 the classified service 
increased from 171,807 to 184,178, about seven 
per cent., while the whole executive service in- 
creased from 300,615 to 326,850, or about eight 
per cent. The classified service did not hold its 
own proportionately. This is said to be due to 
the digging of the Panama canal ''as the 
President may direct." 

New principles have been introduced into 
the service by President Roosevelt. If intro- 
duced by any other man they might be con- 
sidered sinister. Men in the classified service 
now may be dismissed without hearing, with- 
out charges, and without a statement by the 
department head as to the reasons for dismis- 
sal. President Roosevelt has so ordered it. 
Yet one of the most important advances made 
in the civil service under Cleveland was doing 



Roosevelt and the Republic 239 

away with just such irresponsible dismissal. 
Postmaster General Bissell got commendation 
from all civil service reformers for requiring 
that all officers in making removals of subor- 
dinates should file reasons therefor in writing 
and the employee should be given opportunity 
to answer. 

Roosevelt found arbitary dismissal, when 
practiced by political opponents, especially 
mischievous, and is on record as having so de- 
clared. Everybody who knows anything about 
the civil service in Washington knows that 
protection when in office is even more impor- 
tant to efficient men than competitive oppor- 
tunity for entering. That happy and contented 
Roosevelt admiration society, the National 
Civil Service Reform League, regrets that 
"Jove nodded" in this respect. 

Another pretty plan of beating the civil ser- 
vice law is the presidential ukase, or ''special 
order," making individual exceptions. It can 
be used artistically in placing a friend or a 
henchman in the desired spot. There were 
sixty-six of these special orders in one year, 
sixty in another and forty in another, repre- 
senting one hundred and sixty desirable berths 
for persons who had done Roosevelt special 
service. 

It was under a ukase of this sort that *'Joe" 
Murray, Roosevelt's original discoverer, was 
without examination placed in a classified posi- 
tion, assistant immigration commissioner of 
New York City. One could not expect Roose- 
velt to forget his original political discoverer 



240 Roosevelt and the Republic' 

after Roosevelt had arrived and the delectable 
sweets of the pie counter were being distribut- 
ed. It was Murray's misfortune, not his fault, 
that he happened to be an illiterate ward heel- 
er. What is a little matter like a civil service 
law between friends? What matters any law 
when Jove is on your side? 

''There is a certain difference between being 
paid with an office and paid with money, exact- 
ly as there is a certain difference between the 
savagery of the Ashantee and that of the hot- 
tentot, but it is small in amount." (Speech in 
St. Louis, quoted in Leupp's "Life of Roose- 
velt," page 44.) 

^'Where we allow the offices to form part of 
an immense bribery chest, the effect upon po- 
litical life is precisely the same as if we should 
allow the open expenditure of immense sums 
of money bribing voters." (Roosevelt in 
"Public Opinion," April 4, 1895.) 

Roosevelt computed that patronage in the 
State of New York at that time amounted to 
$25,000,000. This, when used for party pur- 
poses, he regarded as a bribery fund. Much 
of it was available for use by the governor. 

"The man who is in politics for the offices," 
says Roosevelt, "might just as well be in poli- 
tics for the money he can get for his vote, so 
far as the public good is concerned." 

Vice-President Hendricks' statement about 
taking the boys in to warm their toes caused 
Mr. Roosevelt to arise and remark that such 
doctrine was "morally on the same plane as 
giving the boys $5 each all round for their 



Roosevelt and the Republic 24r 

votes." Men who talked that way were 
''champions of foul government and dishonest 
practices." Anti-civil service reform men *'had 
a gift of office-mongering, just as other men 
had a gift of picking pockets." 

Mr. Roosevelt might have classed them with 
cutthroats and murderers, but he showed the 
conservative and generous spirit with which 
he deals with those who disagree with him, 
by classing them merely with pickpockets. 
One may therefore realize the critical emerg- 
ency which would induce a patriotic President, 
knowing full well the quality of the offense, to 
use the public patronage to control politics in 
Ohio or New York, to make the South solid for 
a new Martin Van Buren, to dragoon legisla- 
tion through Congress, to castigate such men 
as Wadsworth for daring to disagree with the 
views of the President as to the righteousness 
of a piece of proposed legislation. Serious in- 
deed must be the situation which would induce 
a pure and high-minded patriot like Roosevelt 
to resort to the bribery of voters, even with 
offices. 

Washington Dispatches of March 27, 1907, 
gave in detail a story of the appointment of 
thirty-two postmasters to help Secretary Taft 
control Ohio. Washington newspaper friends 
of Roosevelt told us a year ago that he had 
proposed to place Federal patronage at Gov- 
ernor Hughes' disposal in New York if 
Hughes would in turn support the Roosevelt 
administration. Hughes declined. For weeks 
there have been general charges of Federal 
patronage being used for political purposes. 



242 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Whether as Governor or President, since 
Roosevelt has had patronage at his disposal, 
he has used it notoriously to strengthen his 
party and promote his own fortunes. More 
than that, in no campaign since Roosevelt has 
been President has he failed to help w^ith Fed- 
eral patronage the regular machine organiza- 
tions of his party in local contests. Cox's man 
Herrick v\^as helped in Ohio. Quayism was 
tolerated if not supported in Pennsylvania. 
Friends of decent government appealing to 
Roosevelt for sympathy in an important fight 
were told that they must not make trouble 
between the senators of that state and the 
President. Huldah Todd walked the plank in 
DelaAvare because she was not to the liking of 
Addick's man — Alice in Delaware. District- 
Attorney Byrne became a constructive recess 
man in his important office to bolster up the 
fortunes of the delectable gas man. Piatt did 
not suffer in New York, or Spooner in Wis- 
consin. Strange to say, this "office-monger- 
ing" which the President so picturesquely 
characterizes as bribery, has always under 
Roosevelt been for the benefit of the reaction- 
ary machine. Only a tried and true civil ser- 
vice reformer could so meritoriously and patri- 
otically use public patronage as a "bribery 
fund." 

Private Secretary Cortelyou mounted rapid- 
ly as the servitor of President Roosevelt. First 
came the new cabinet position. Secretary of 
Commerce and Labor. As chairman of the Re- 
publican National Committee, in personal 



Roosevelt and the Republic 243 

charge of Roosevelt's campaign for the presi- 
dency, he v^as doing still more patriotic ser- 
vice. Therefore the President w^as justified in 
promising him the Post Office Department if 
he ''made good." Mr. Hitchcock w^ent v^ith 
Cortelyou from the classified service, detailed 
for the w^ork, so to speak. Both did their v^ork 
so w^ell that they landed higher up, Cortelyou 
at the head of the Post Office Department, 
which had been promised him ; Hitchcock as 
his assistant later on. Cortelyou managed the 
Republican party while in the pay of Uncle 
Sam. Private Secretary Cortelyou still 
mounts. Now he has reached that highly-to- 
be-desired stage of progress where he may 
graduate as a high-salaried bank president. 
Hitchcock is to take a fresh start. Newspapers 
sav that this member of Roosevelt's executive 
ministry has been loaned to Secretary Taft. If 
-o, he might use the knowledge and influence 
gained in the Post Office Department in help- 
ing his candidate, just as Cortelyou is sup- 
posed to have used knowledge gained in the 
government service to help Roosevelt. 

In minor places, where the work is done un- 
der the guidance of skilled chiefs, civil service 
reformers insist that experience means effici- 
ency. Strangely enough, experience is wholly 
useless in administering a gigantic department. 
Roosevelt cabinet officers can master depart- 
ment after department of the government in an 
incredibly short time. The more they are 
shifted about, the better it seems for the de- 



i244 Roosevelt and the Republic 

partment — and the men. Postal problems ? No 
experience is necessary in meeting them ! 

Shameful it was in Hendricks to talk of tak- 
ing the boys in to warm their toes. But very 
properly could President Roosevelt appoint 
John S. Clarkson, the offensive spoilsman of 
Harrison's administration to the surveyorship 
in New York for services past and to come. 
His giving places to Frantz, Curry, Mcllhenny, 
Ben Daniels and the other host of Rough 
Riders that he has remembered, was entirely 
just and proper. Generals Wood, Bell, Grant, 
personal friends, vaulted over the heads of 
others through the most patriotic motives on 
the part of all concerned. We do not overlook 
the fact that upon the face of the returns, 
Roosevelt had nothing to do with the surpris- 
ing advancement of the medical military men. 
Therefore we cannot hold Roosevelt responsi- 
ble for the effect upon discipline and efficiency. 
Nor should we mention, except in passing the 
effort of Roosevelt to have such promotion in 
the army made the rule — leave it all to the dis- 
cretion of the president and his staff advisers. 
Such things would look very bad in Hendricks. 
They were cause for praise of Roosevelt. 

Roosevelt has labored assiduously, and not 
without success, to confine violation of the 
merit principle in civil service to the President 
alone. If place is to be given for political ser- 
vice, it must be service to the President. If 
personal or political loyalty is to be rewarded 
with Federal patronage, it must be loyalty to 
the President. If partisan lines are to be 



Roosevelt and the Republic '245 

crossed in appointments as in the South, it is 
because the President has a loyal supporter on 
the other side of the line. The more strictly 
civil service rules are enforced as to all other 
persons the more useful is the presidential pre- 
rogative of breaking them. 

Should spoils apply, even to the 143,000 un- 
classified places indiscriminately, the President 
must perforce permit congressmen and sena- 
tors to distribute the plums. A President of 
Roosevelt's industry in office for a century 
might intelligently pass upon such a mass of 
appointees. If congressmen and senators were 
permitted to choose, each lawmaker might be- 
come the center of a little political machine. 
Loyalty would be first to the lawmaker. When 
it came to a test, the machine might be used 
against the President. It might be made an 
engine to defeat his policies. With civil ser- 
vice rules enforced and place to be reached 
^vhen needed by ''special order" only, or by 
( ther executive device, all must come to the 
President. Loyalty must run to him. In fact, 
'.vith the "special order" and the presidential 
places, the President has all the patronage he 
can keep sufficiently centralized, or useful. 
Theodore Roosevelt has four times the spoils 
to distribute enjoyed by such an unholy spoils- 
man as Andrew Jackson. Eight thousand good 
places, supplemented by the possibilities of the 
"temporary appointment" and "special order," 
are amply sufficient for all presidential pur- 
poses. One's personal friends and supporters 



246 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of tried loyalty are necessarily limited in num- 
ber. 

In another respect, Theodore Roosevelt has 
made a clever use of Federal patronage. 
Friends of Roosevelt's policies in Congress 
have reaped reward. Opponents have suffered. 
Of late, helped on by public patronage and the 
Roosevelt newspaper claque, the notion has 
been gaining ground that the Senate and 
House of Representatives are political record- 
ing machines intended to register in statutes 
the presidential will. Any senator or repre- 
sentative who questions this view comes dan- 
gerously close to being a traitor. Monopoliz- 
ing, as he does, the right to violate civil ser- 
vice rules has strengthened Roosevelt mightily 
in his heroic battles for his political policies. 
High motives cover a multitude of spoils. 

President Roosevelt has taught the nation 
what quality of men should constitute the "gov- 
erning class." Never since the time of Adams 
has the service been made up so exclusive- 
Iv of proper gentlemen. It was not Roosevelt's 
fault that Harvard graduates were not availa- 
ble for all positions at his disposal. Lacking 
that ideal condition, he has invited other uni- 
versities and colleges to the feast. This is em- 
phatically the day of college men in govern- 
ment. Since Jackson's ''hoi polloi" followed 
him to Washington, never has the "unwashed 
mob" been so nearly excluded from important 
government place as under Roosevelt. Excep- 
tions like Clark, Sargeant and "Joe" Murray 
prove the rule. Exceptional personal loyalty 



Roosevelt and the Republic 247 

may overbalance lack of caste. Humble in- 
terests must be recognized to some extent. 

Hampered as he has been by confining him- 
self in the main to personal considerations in 
making appointments, President Roosevelt 
may be excused for collecting about him 
rather small men. Larger men are not so use- 
ful in carrying out the policies of a mighty 
chief. Moody, Metcalf, Bonaparte, Holmes, 
Shaw, Day, Morton and Garfield may be cited 
as examples. Then, too, it is not every cabinet 
officer who will permit a President to use him 
as a messenger boy ; to go over his head and 
under his feet as Roosevelt is constantly doing 
with Metcalf, for instance. Gage would not 
stand it. It disorganized his department and 
destroyed his efficiency. His stay in the cabi- 
net was short after the advent of Roosevelt. It 
humiliated Hay beyond measure, but he bore 
it to the end. The big men of the administra- 
tion — Hay, Root, Taft, Hitchcock, and in his 
way, Wilson — were inherited from McKinley, 
who was an uncommonly keen judge of men. 
If Roosevelt has used Root, the compliment 
has certainly been returned. 

It must be trying to the manhood of a big 
man to have the gag tightly applied unless one 
wishes to become an executive sounding board. 
Of course we do not refer to the minor men 
in the Federal service, those pathetic political 
eunuchs denied all rights of citizenship except 
sneaking home to vote. Our wise civil service 
reformers have found civic activity incompati- 
ble with Federal office-holding, and the Presi- 



248 Roosevelt and the Republic 

dent has bound and gagged Federal employees 
politically, by common consent. Some bedlam- 
ite President may yet decide that a fourth class 
postmaster, a postal, a patent, or a treasury 
clerk who is an American citizen has as good 
a right to speak his mind on politics as has a 
cabinet officer. We are still happily spared 
from such dangerous heresy. It seems, how- 
ever, a compromise might be effected. 

It has been found highly meritorious for 
cabinet officers to leave their departmental 
business in the hands of subordinates, and go 
up and down the country justifying adminis- 
tration policies, or helping to re-elect their 
chief. This important phase of a cabinet min- 
ister's official duty has never received proper 
emphasis until a civil service reformer like 
Roosevelt gave it point. Heretofore, it was 
not deemed necessary for a colonial governor 
to cable an official report for the purpose of 
supporting a presidential candidate in a cam- 
paign, as was done in 1904 from Manila. 

Roosevelt has carried the matter still fur- 
ther by loaning cabinet officers to political ma- 
chines to help them out in close campaigns, as 
in Pennsylvania and Ohio. 

All in all, we have made progress under 
Roosevelt. What the President has done in 
the line of civil service extension, has been rec- 
ognized as never before. He was applauded 
for placing Panama under the classified service 
and equally applauded for withdrawing it from 
classification. It was praiseworthy to leave 
^,000 pension examining doctors outside the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 249 

bars. We shall have renewed applause when 
the 65,000 fourth class postmasters all become 
Roosevelt partisans and are made secure in 
their places under the protection of the classi- 
fied list, as were so many employees made se- 
cure before Harrison left office. 

The mill can never grind with the water that 
is past. If those postoffices now become the 
permanent reward of past political service, they 
will not be available in future in paying for 
like service. This is all we can expect until we 
realize that the constituency capable of elect- 
ing a congressman might successfully elect a 
postmaster. 

Future presidents can hardly use the per- 
sonal machine built up by Roosevelt. His 
work may therefore strengthen greatly our 
civil service, although he has left for designing 
successors many awkward precedents. 



^^0 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, ROOSEVELT*S POLITICAL 
IDEAL. 

Alexander Hamilton, in Roosevelt's estima- 
tion, stands head and shoulders above all other 
American statesmen. It w^as he who originat- 
ed nearly everything good, great and lasting in 
our government. 

"No American after Hamilton has done 
greater service than Chief Justice Marshall in 
making the nation." (Winning the West.) 

Come forth, oh mighty Shade of the Revolu- 
tion! Teach us your political philosophy so 
that we may understand the political philoso- 
phy of your strenuous disciple, Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

Alexander Hamilton w^as a member of the 
Constitutional Convention of 1787. His rec- 
ognized intellectual force gave him a place. 
But the perverted citizens of New York dis- 
trusted his ideas of government. Hamilton 
was a minority delegate. His light was hidden. 
Hamilton's theories of government could not 
find expression in votes. Delegates voted by 
states — the unit rule of our later political con- 
ventions. 

For weeks the suppressed Hamilton smoked 



Roosevelt and the Republic 251 

and fumed, a human Vesuvius. On a bright 
June day, the seventeenth, the eruption came. 
Then the red-hot lava of his pent-up political 
w^isdom broke forth. 

He doubted whether Republican govern- 
ment could be established over so large a ter- 
ritory, but he thought it unwise at that time 
to propose any other sort because the people 
would not listen to it. He had no scruple, how- 
ever, in saying what sort of government he 
favored. Supported as he was by the opinion 
of so many wise and good men, he had no hesi- 
tancy in declaring that the British government 
was the best in the world and he doubted much 
if anything short of it would do in America. 
(Kings, lords, the established church, nobility, 
caste, the whole mediaeval mess.) 

The members most tenacious of republican- 
ism were, he observed, loud as any in declar- 
ing against the views of Democracy. The 
progress of the public mind led him to antici- 
pate the time when others as well as himselt 
would join in the praise bestowed by Mr. 
Necker on the British constitution, namely, 
that it is the only government in the world 
which united public strength with individual 
security. 

Their House of Lords is a most noble insti- 
tution. They form a permanent barrier against 
pernicious innovation. The Senate proposed 
was not adequate to such a purpose. They 
(some people) suppose seven years a sufficient 
period to give the Senate adequate firmness, 
because they fail to consider the amazing vio- 



25^ RoOSEVELt AND THE REPUBLIC 

lence and turbulence of the democratic spirit. 

Hamilton freely confessed that he was op- 
posed to popular government, as his associates 
well knew. 

As to the executive, it seemed to be admitted 
that no good one could be established upon 
republican principles. Can there be a good 
government without a good executive? The 
English monarchy was the only good model 
upon this subject. The hereditary interests of 
the king were so interwoven with that of the 
nation and his personal emolument so great 
he was placed above the danger of being cor- 
rupted from abroad. We ought to go as far 
in order to attain stability and permanency as 
republican principles admit. Let one branch 
of the Legislature hold their office for life, or 
at least during good behavior. Let the execu- 
tive also be for life. He argued that we must 
go as far at least as an elective monarch. 

Hamilton did not expect immediate adoption 
of his scheme, but he expected the confederacy 
to fail and he saw evils operating in the states 
that would cure the people of their fondness 
for self-government. Firmly fixed in the belief 
that the delusion of popular government would 
pass, Hamilton went on to outline the govern- 
ment which he would establish as a step to- 
ward the more perfect English system: 

Assembly with limited powers elected for 
three years. 

Senate for life elected by a few electors. 

President for life elected by a few electors. 

Absolute veto, treaty-making power, as well 



Roosevelt and the Republic 253 

as the appointment of officers, in the hands of 
the executive. 

Senate to declare war and approve treaties, 
also approve appointments, except the cabinet. 

Judges for life. 

National executive to appoint all state gov- 
ernors. These governors to have absolute 
veto upon acts of state legislatures. 

State militia was to be under the control of 
the general government. 

His idea was to destroy the states utterly 
as autonomous entities in charge of local af- 
fairs. They were to be mere departments of 
the Federal government. 

Popular government to Hamilton was ''but 
pork still with a change of sauce." 

After Hamilton had outlined his plan for 
a new constitutional monarchy for America, he 
left the hall to return no more until mid-Au- 
gust. But his plan has been preserved in Madi- 
son's Journal, as outlined above. 

Born in a British colony with little power in 
the hands of the people, Hamilton naturally 
turned to the kingly order. Narrow, intense, 
autocratic to the weak, sycophantic to the 
strong, without imagination, he could only 
grope along the trail of mediaeval governmental 
forms, still in a modified condition surviving 
in Europe. 

With the heads of the deluded people full of 
Jefferson's foolish Declaration of Independ- 
ence, which, of course, sounded absurd to a 
strong man like Hamilton, our monarch-loving 
patriot knew that at that time his scheme could 



254 Roosevelt and the Republic 

not be put in practice. The people of America 
could not just then be cheated out of the 
freedom they had fought for. Hamilton would 
bide his time. Let the foolish weaklings with 
democratic tendencies have their fling. Soon 
they would call upon the strong man, then 
there would be kinghood and respectability. 

Hamilton came back in August, but he had 
little to do with the making of the constitution. 
A life judiciary was set up, but Hamilton's 
ideas upon that point were not unique. Madi- 
son really outlined the plan. Occasionally 
Hamilton raised his voice in protest against 
too much power for the people, but his influ- 
ence in the making of the constitution was very 
slight. 

Hamilton had many sympathizers in the con- 
stitutional convention, even though he had 
little support. While made up of as able men, 
perhaps, as any similar convention ever as- 
sembled on earth, and as patriotic, the conven- 
tion had little of the democratic taint. Frank- 
lin was a thorough Democrat. Madison, Ran- 
dolph, Mason, Ellsworth, Gorham, Sherman, 
and a few others, showed at times some taint 
of democracy. This was especially true of 
Mason, who actually attacked black slavery, 
although coming from slave-holding Virginia. 
But not one had delusions as to the popular 
temper. They well knew that unless large 
concessions were made to those deluded with 
tjie theories of popular self-government, the 
constitution could never receive the ratification 
of the states. Therefore they swallowed their 



Roosevelt and the Republic 255 

disgust and made a constitution permitting of 
remarkable democratic development. Hamil- 
ton would have made the issue, let the states 
separate and give the ''strong man" opportu- 
nity to assemble them on a better basis. 

Naturally in making such a constitution as 
was made, such men as Randolph, Mason, 
Madison, Ellsworth and Franklin would be 
given greater scope than their aristocratic col- 
leagues. With few exceptions, among whom 
were Hamilton and Morris, nobody seemed 
willing to face the chaos which might have 
followed failure to make a constitution which 
could be adopted, and to count upon reaction 
to secure a more autocratic and therefore a 
better government. 

In his Federalist papers Hamilton gave a 
much milder exposition of his theories govern- 
mental, sugar-coating his statement to the 
taste of a weakling public. He wanted the con- 
stitution adopted as the least evil possible of 
attainment at that time. It might be interpret- 
ed into shape by that life judiciary. 

"Various reasons," says Hamilton, ''have 
been suggested in the course of these papers 
to induce the probability that the general gov- 
ernment will be better administered than the 
particular governments, the principal of which 
are that . . . through the medium of the 
state legislatures, which are select bodies of 
men and which are to appoint the members of 
the National Senate, there is reason to expect 
that this branch will usually be composed with 
peculiar care." (Federalist, No. 27.) 



256 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Somehow this election of senators by the 
legislatures, notwithstanding the sublime and 
altogether infallible political wisdom of Ham- 
ilton, has done as much as any other one thing 
to corrupt our politics and make special inter- 
ests secure in the control of the Federal gov- 
ernment. 

Electoral colleges have been made a farce 
by the march of the Democratic spirit, but their 
ghosts still have power for mischief. 

''No man's ideas were more remote from the 
plan than his own were known to be," said 
Hamilton in finally deciding to support the 
constitution, ''but is it possible to deliberate 
between anarchy (state governments?) on the 
one side and the chance of good to be expected 
from the plan on the other." (Madison's Jour- 
nal, page 746.) 

"A well constituted court for the trial of im- 
peachments is an object not more to be de- 
sired than difficult to obtain in a government 
wholly elective." (Ford's Federalist, 433.) 

Probably the genesis of Roosevelt's notion 
that officers should ignore the will of those who 
elect them, is found in Hamilton's statement: 
"When occasions present themselves in which 
the interests of the people are at variance with 
their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons 
whom they have appointed to be guardians 
over their interests, to withstand the temporary 
delusions." (Ford's Federalist, 477.) 

Hamilton had a keen appreciation, as Roose- 
velt has, of the danger from states' rights : 
"The danger which most threatens our political 



Roosevelt and the Republic 257 

welfare is that the state governments will 
finally sap the foundations of the Union." 
(Ford's Federalist, 203.) 

''It will always be more easy for the state 
governments to encroach upon the national au- 
thorities, than for the national government to 
encroach upon the state authorities." (Fed- 
eralist, 17.) 

Hamilton's wonderful foresight in this re- 
gard is indicated by the sequel. State en- 
croachment on the Federal governmental au- 
thorities has been a caution. Hamilton, Madi- 
son and other good men seem to have over- 
looked the power of party in politics to give 
the Federal government overmastering domin- 
ation over the states. The majority of states 
are ruled usually by the majority party in the 
nation. Party loyalty will require them to 
stand by the Federal government in a contest 
with any one state, especially in a state of the 
minority. Thus the Federal government will 
overmaster the states in detail. As Federal 
power grows, the people of all other states, al- 
most regardless of party, will take the side of 
the Federal government against almost any 
state but their own. Only when identical in- 
terests draw contiguous states together in op- 
position have we an exception to the rule. 

Hostility to state government had a deeper 
significance with Hamilton. He recognized 
that local self-government was the only means 
of maintaining popular institutions. Putting 
responsibility upon citizens, it develops in 
them resistance to interference from without. 



258 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Legislative branches, Hamilton thought, 
might encroach upon the executive, especially 
might this be expected from the national House 
of Representatives. In view of the present 
suppineness of the body this prediction seems 
almost grotesque, but Hamilton being v/ith- 
out imagination, was wrong in almost every 
prediction. English Commons were cited as 
a parallel. Progress toward democracy could 
not fail to strengthen the Commons, for the 
Commons are its only means of expression. In 
America all three branches get power from 
the people, and all get similar support. The 
executive is best organized to bid for such 
support and does so most effectively. 

''Government," says Hamilton, "is instituted 
more for the protection of property than the 
persons of individuals. The one as well as the 
other may be considered represented by those 
who are charged with the government." 

Such was the meaning of property qualifica- 
tions for voting in New York State. In the 
United States government, ''The RIGHTS OF 
PROPERTY are committed to the same hands 
as personal rights." The opulent citizen has 
large influence because of his wealth, and 
"through this imperceptible channel the 
RIGHTS OF PROPERTY are conveyed into 
the representation. (Federalist, No. 54.) 

An individual's right to the possession and 
enjoyment of property has been dinned into 
the average citizen until he thinks he compre- 
hends it. But to him the "RIGHTS OF 
PROPERTY" has a bizarre sound. He may 



Roosevelt and the Republic 259 

see clearly enough in his humorous moods that 
a gold dollar should have the right of free 
speech and immunity from cruel and unusual 
punishments ; a diamond ring ought not to be 
subjected to false imprisonment; false arrest 
should not be inflicted upon a brick house. 
When one takes concrete examples, like these, 
the dullest mind can see the absurdity of deny- 
ing property its ''RIGHTS." But when it 
comes to making a generalization, as Hamilton 
did, as to the "RIGHTS OF PROPERTY," 
and finding government protection for property 
in these "RIGHTS," the Jeffersonian mind is 
totally unable to follow him. 

Some of the milder Jeffersonians contend 
that Hamilton's "rights of property" was mere- 
ly an inoffensive way of asserting that men 
with dollars had greater political rights than 
men without dollars, and were entitled to 
greater privileges and better protection. Then 
they howl "plutocracy !" 

An irresponsible type of Jeffersonian has 
paraphrased Hamilton's philosophical proposi- 
tion in this way: "Government is instituted 
more for the protection of household furniture 
and live stock than the persons of individuals. 
The one as well as the other may be considered 
represented by those who are charged with the 
government. The rights of flour mills are com- 
mitted to the same hands as personal rights. 
Rich men have great influence. Through this 
imperceptible channel the rights of donkeys 
(property) are conveyed into the represcnta- 



26o Roosevelt and the Republic 

Absurd and foolish persons, of course, can 
give a grotesque twist to the w^isest philosophy. 
Hamilton's discriminating doctrine has been 
accepted by his followers from Adams to 
Roosevelt. Roosevelt speaks repeatedly of the 
"RIGHTS OF PROPERTY." In fiact, if prop- 
erty had not "rights" as set forth by Hamilton, 
there would be no foundation at all for laws 
granting special privileges. The so-called plu- 
tocratic strain inour institutions would be miss- 
ing. We would guard property and contracts 
less carefully and pay more attention to human 
life. The rights of men without dollars might 
count for as much as the rights of men with 
dollars. One may readily imagine the chaos 
to follow such a state. 

Hamilton's advocacy of the constitution, de- 
fective though he thought it to be, had some- 
thing to do with its adoption in the State of 
New York. Once adopted his energy was ex- 
erted toward interpreting it in a way agreeing 
with his own ideas of what a government 
should be. But his opponents were sufficiently 
strong to get the amendments embodying a bill 
of rights. In fact, had that not been promised 
the constitution would have failed of confirma- 
tion. 

His place in Washington's cabinet gave 
Hamilton peculiar opportunity to secure the 
thing he wished. Hamilton had gone into the 
cabinet some time before Jefferson. Already 
when Jefferson entered, Hamilton had given 
the government the Hamiltonian trend. For 
a little time Jefferson did not seem to realize 



Roosevelt and the Republic i2'6r 

Just what Hamilton was doing. In some re- 
spects Jefferson fell in with Hamilton's plans; 

Washington trusted Hamilton. In matters 
governmental their sympathies ran much more 
nearly parallel than those of Washington and 
Jefferson. Hamilton's great intellectual force 
and his superior knowledge of law and of gov- 
ernmental details, made Washington his 
debtor. Washington accepted Hamilton's ad- 
vice upon organization and policies. 

England was the ideal in government Ham* 
ilton labored to attain. His whole energy was 
bent upon repeating, as nearly as may be, the 
British government in the revolted colonies. 
In his position at the head of the national 
finances, he had opportunities to put English 
policies into practice. Protection, following 
the British policy of the time, was one of his 
early cares. 

Hamilton realized that the debates of the 
constitutional convention were too fresh in the 
public mind to admit of an interpretation of 
the constitution radically different from that 
indicated in these debates. Chartering of mis- 
cellaneous corporations by the general govern- 
ment was no part of the constitutional pro- 
gramme. Neither was there to be any inter- 
ference with subjects of local taxation. But 
taxes were to be collected. This Hamilton 
argued implied a fiscal agent for their collec- 
tion. The fiscal agent might be a bank. Thus 
was the thin edge of the wedge of implied 
powers inserted in the constitution. Soon the 
rent was sufficiently large for the national 



262 Roosevelt and the Republic 

bank. Implied powers, and "general welfare/* 
judging by their application, seem to have 
meant more than all the rest of the constitu- 
tion, except possibly taking property without 
just compensation or due process of law. 

In our day we have gone beyond these feeble 
Hamilton subterfuges. Theodore Roosevelt 
knows that the constitution authorizes the in- 
corporation of any body which Congress may 
see fit to charter. To him the laws of inheri- 
tance, the laws which Hamilton instanced as 
peculiarly the province of the state, are the 
subject of Federal modiiication. For more 
than a century the Supreme Court has been ex- 
panding the constitution to suit its own grow- 
ing power. Debates in the constitutional con- 
vention have been forgotten. 

In our foreign relations, Hamilton believed 
in courting the friendship of Great Britain and 
turning a cold shoulder upon France. True, 
Great Britain had wantonly violated the Treaty 
of Paris. Posts which in this treaty it had 
agreed to surrender were still held by British 
garrisons. American merchantmen were still 
being captured on the high seas. American 
seamen were being impressed, American ves- 
sels searched. Border Indians were being in- 
cited to pillage and murder. In fact, Great 
Britain was treating the revolted, but now in- 
dependent colonies, with all the cruel, cold- 
blooded, insulting arrogance that this most pi- 
ratical of all nations was capable of imposing 
upon a weaker victim. 

This did not matter to Hamilton. Great 



Roosevelt and the Republic 263 

Britain was his first love still, his ideal. He 
must keep her toleration at any cost of cowar- 
dice and humiliation. On the other hand, 
France, which had helped us in our hour of 
need, had become saturated with democracy. 
It had overthrown kings and nobles and was 
at bay before king-ridden Europe. Such a 
friend was thoroughly disreputable — impossi- 
ble to a man of Hamilton's sympathies. 

Jefferson as ambassador of the young nation, 
had been snubbed and insulted by the arrogant 
swinish British king. He had no sympathy 
with kingly government, but had learned to 
love the French, even the more because they 
were toppling over thrones. 

Hamilton's ideas of governmental policies 
could no more harmonize with those of Jeffer- 
son than could oil mix with water. They be- 
came disturbing elements in Washington's ad- 
ministration. Drifting farther and farther 
apart, each attracted to himself a group of fol- 
lowers with ideas akin to his own. Soon there 
were two distinct political parties, although 
while Washington remained President they 
were not clearly defined. On broad lines these 
parties still persist, alviiough their names have 
often changed. 

Jay's treaty with England had been signed. 
Genet had come and gone. Hamilton's policies 
secured full ascendency in the administration. 
He was all powerful. Jefferson retired. Still 
he watched the course of events with eager 
solicitation. Hamilton had not made friends. 
Jay's treaty had caused him to be stoned in the 



264 Roosevelt and the Republic 

streets. One can well imagine why. He had 
intrigued against everybody associated with 
him in Washington's government. A veritable 
granny for sharp-tongued gossip, he had at- 
tacked and destroyed reputations. Adams took 
him as an inheritance, even though he had 
tried to cheat Adams out of the presidency by 
elevating to that position a candidate for the 
vice-presidency. 

While Washington remained at the head of 
the government, his influence protected the un- 
popular Hamilton. When Adams succeeded 
the great chief after one of the bitterest cam- 
paigns imaginable, there was no longer the 
shadow of the great chief as a refuge. Then 
Hamilton and his forces must meet in open 
battle with Jefferson and his clans. Soon 
Adams found in Hamilton an awkward inheri- 
tance. The arrogant leader of the Federalists 
wanted to dictate Adams' policies. He even 
had spies in Adams' own household. 

Hamilton had had a most picturesque ca- 
reer. Coming to New York as a nameless ad- 
venturer of doubtful parentage, he had mar- 
ried into the rich and powerful Schuyler family. 
This with his exceptional ability had made 
him a power in New York politics. As a nat- 
ural leader he insisted upon ruling with an 
iron hand. 

Aristocratic in sentiment, exclusive, vindic- 
tive, tricky, he had made as many enemies in 
his own state as in the Federal government. 
These he pursued. Once in control, he suc- 
ceeded in shutting out the Livingstons from 



Roosevelt and The Republic 265 

political preferment. Rufus King and Gen- 
eral Schuyler were made senators. It cost 
Hamilton the Empire state, for the Livingstons 
w^ere men of power, and withal fond of battle. 

This was in 1800. Always a bad loser, Ham- 
ilton was beside himself, and actually proposed 
to Jay to call together a legislature which had 
adjourned sine die and whose successors had 
been elected, nullify the election, and by put- 
ting in force a new plan, turn the state over to 
the Federalists. Jay, who walked straight in 
his aristocratic boots, rejected the tricky 
counsel. 

In these numerous political contests, a man 
as different as possible from Hamilton had 
crossed his path. This time was the clash 
most irritating to both. Aaron Burr was one 
of the best born of Americans. His military 
reputation was as good as that of Hamilton. 
He was Hamilton's rival in law and politics. 
Neither was a political fighter choice of meth- 
ods. Yet Burr was the more generous and less 
vindictive of the two. Both were inordinately 
ambitious ; both implacable haters. 

While this rivalry had been in progress, 
Hamilton had repeatedly attacked Burr bitterly 
in speech and letter. He had reflected upon 
Burr's character, attacked his integrity, made 
him out a mean, despicable, conscienceless in- 
triguer. With Washington, Hamilton had 
ruined Burr's standing. He had injured Burr 
with everybody who gave weight to Hamilton. 
It is probable that during most of this time 
Burr was ignorant of Hamilton's slanders. The 



266 Roosevelt and the Republic 

men met socially and professionally. They 
dined together. On the surface all was serene. 
After Hamilton's defeat in 1800, these slanders 
redoubled. Soon Hamilton had an opportu- 
nity to retaliate by shutting Burr out of the 
presidency, not that he hated Jefferson less, 
but he hated Burr more. 

With Jefferson's election to the presidency, 
Hamilton's influence in national politics was 
gone. The attempts to destroy freedom of 
speech and of the press and to make the 
President an autocrat in dealing with aliens 
had destroyed utterly the Federalist party. But 
still Hamilton had influence in New York. 
Joining forces with the Livingstons and Clin- 
tons, he defeated Burr for the governorship. 
Burr at this time was becoming morose and 
dangerous, embittered as was Hamilton by dis- 
appointment and thwarted ambition. 

As the swelling tide of democracy arose, 
Hamilton became more bitter and implacable. 
Both men in New York, the Burr-Hamilton 
feud blazed forth afresh. Hamilton had writ- 
ten new letters slanderously assailing Burr and 
attacking his integrity. Burr at length dis- 
covered Hamilton's treachery. Local news- 
papers taunted Burr. Had the vice-president 
of the United States fallen so low as to per- 
mit himself to be insulted by Hamilton with- 
out resenting it. This new indignity was more 
than the fiery Burr could bear. He sent a copy 
of the attacking epistle to Hamilton and asked 
an explanation. It was the day of the code 
duello. Both Burr and Hamilton had been 



Roosevelt and the Republic 267 

mixed in other affairs of "honor" settled by 
blood-wager. Hamilton's favorite son had 
fallen on the "field of honor" without protest 
from Hamilton. As second Hamilton had en- 
gaged himself in the duel. Burr's communica- 
tion therefore meant explain, apologize, or 
fight. 

Hamilton equivocated. The dashing soldier 
seemed at last possessed of something like fear. 
Burr coldly stuck to his text. At length the 
great Federalist had seen into what a critical 
place his slanderous attacks had brought him. 
Appleton's cyclopedia of biography says : 

"Hamilton was haunted with the belief that 
democracy was going to culminate in the hor- 
rors of the French revolution, that a strong 
man would be needed and that society would 
turn to him for salvation. In that case he 
would be disqualified if he failed to fight Burr." 
Possibly visions of that much-to-be-desired 
monarchy with the crown upon Hamilton's 
brow floated before him. At all events, Ham- 
ilton went very reluctantly into this fight. He 
feared the cold relentlessness of his antagonist. 

That early morning meeting on the grassy 
shelf at Weehauken is history. Hamilton fell 
after having written a statement intended to 
put upon Burr the stigma of murder and to 
hold Hamilton up as a martyr. It was an act 
almost infinite in its meanness. Impartial 
judges, at this time, are inclined to think that 
Burr did the only thing possible at that time 
in his environment. The consequences were 
guch as nobody could foresee. The bullet 



268 Roosevelt and the Republic 

which killed Hamilton made Burr an outlaw. 
It cut off two brilliant careers and rang the 
death knell of the duel in that section. 

Possibly Burr's bullet saved the Republic 
from the powerful trend toward monarchy 
which Hamilton would undoubtedly have 
given it had he ever become arbiter of its for- 
tunes. At that time it looked as though Ham- 
ilton had shot his bolt and had been hopeless- 
ly and permanently eliminated from national 
politics. Still, had Hamilton lived, it is hard 
to say that his overpowering intellectual force, 
driven forward by his restless ambition, might 
not have elevated him again to a place of power 
and authority. The lack of poise shown by 
Hamilton in the Jay and other incidents, left 
no criterion for forecasting the exact direction 
which his activities might have taken. Possi- 
bly had he lived our government would have 
developed the "stability, the strength'' and the 
caste enjoyed by the English people. Or pos- 
sibly Hamilton, failing in such a plan, might 
have been branded with Burr one of the "trait- 
ors" of the Republic. 

Strange, indeed, it was that two such men 
as Burr and Hamilton should have crossed each 
other's pathways. Burr with his brilliant, rest- 
less, reckless, passionate intensity, his generos- 
ity, his strength, and his weaknesses. Hamil- 
ton of intellect so powerful as to lift him from 
the place of mere adventurer to the highest 
station. Wedded with relentless ardor to that 
aristocracy of which he was not and against 
which fate had compelled him to strike a tell- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 269 

ing blow. Clashing ambition brought him and 
Burr to the field of ''honor." Burr's bullet 
made Hamilton a victim and started Burr on 
the downward road to destruction. The bullet 
that made Hamilton a martyr insured genera- 
tions of praise for the one man in all history 
who has had the most sinister influence upon 
the Republic. 

To the democratic student of history the 
high estimate which historians have placed 
upon Hamilton is most perplexing. Every fear 
he expresses as to the evil tendencies of dem- 
ocracy, time has proved utterly groundless. 
Few evils in our governmental system but can 
be traced to the distrust which Hamilton had 
in the people and the devices which his school 
employed to prevent the masses from exerting 
real power. Legislative election of senators 
and electoral choosing of Presidents have been 
the prolific parents of numberless carrion 
broods. An irresponsible Federal judiciary has 
bound us hand and foot and delivered us to 
special interests. Executive power has grown 
to unwieldy proportions. Federal usurpation 
threatens to degrade states into provinces and 
transfer our government into a bureaucracy. 
Hamilton was a false prophet. His influence 
upon the Republic was almost wholly sinister. 

Born a Hamilton ''Republican," a profound 
believer in strong government, Theodore 
Roosevelt naturally looks upon Hamilton as 
his political patron saint. If we have reached 
such an elevation in political philosophy that 
.we can overcome our prejudices in favor of 



270 Roosevelt and the Republic 

self-government and see the superior merits of 
the forms of government v^hich the older and 
vvriser nations approve, we shall agree with 
Hamilton and Roosevelt. If our vision be nar- 
row, if we are obsessed with the vagaries and 
sophistries of the Declaration of Independence, 
we shall still strive for the ideals of theorists 
and doctrinaires like Jefferson. 

But whatever view we take, we must yield 
the palm of merit to Theodore Roosevelt. 
Hamilton had lived for years under the British 
flag. Love of Britain had been bred in his 
blood and bone. In Hamilton's time no con- 
siderable experiment in applying democratic 
republican principles to government on a large 
scale had proved successful. It was most nat- 
ural for the practical, unimaginative, efficient 
Hamilton to prefer monarchy. He can claim 
no great credit for it. But President Roose- 
velt and his ancestors for generations have 
prospered under what is by many considered 
a successful experiment in democratic republi- 
can government. Naturally he would be ex- 
pected to favor the democratic republican form 
through sheer predilection. That he realizes 
its weaknesses, its shortcomings, its inade- 
quacy, and favors the Hamilton ideal, shows 
the broad liberality of his mind and his firm 
grasp of the problems of practical government. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 271 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON, AND HIS SINISTER 
DEMOCRACY. 

In our introduction to this narrative we have 
given some indication of how Roosevelt, his- 
torian, regards Thomas Jefferson. This 
touched the surface merely. Contempt hardly 
expresses the feeling of the Spanish War hero 
for the Revolutionary weakling doctrinaire. 
There are scores of references, direct and in- 
direct, in Roosevelt's writings to Thomas Jef- 
ferson. With few exceptions they show that 
Thomas Jefferson was utterly despicable in 
Theodore Roosevelt's sight. In fact, Roosevelt 
seems to harbor an intense and bitter hatred 
for the man who foiled Hamilton's plans for a 
centralized American government. 

Just as Roosevelt agrees with Hamilton in 
his theories of government and loved and ad- 
mired him for them, he takes issue with every 
tenet of Jefferson and despises the man who 
gave voice to such folly. Roosevelt and de- 
mocracy are not more irreconcilable than 
Roosevelt and Jefferson, for to Roosevelt, Jef- 
ferson means democracy. Here are some of 
the references in Roosevelt's writings to this 



272 Roosevelt and the Republic 

most despicable of our American statesmen as 
Roosevelt views him : 

"Though a man whose views and theories 
had a profound influence upon the national life, 
he was perhaps the most incapable executive 
that ever filled the presidential chair ; being al- 
most purely visionary, he was utterly unable 
to grapple with the slightest actual danger, and 
not even excepting his successor, Madison, it 
would be difficult to find a man less fit to guide 
the state zvith honor and safety through the 
stormy times that marked the opening of the. 
present century." (Roosevelt's writings.) 

"Morris despised Jefferson for a tricky and 
incapable theorist." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Morris, pages 330 and 331.) 

"Jefiferson was President and Madison was 
Secretary of State. The country never had two 
statesmen less capable of upholding the dignity 
of the nation. . . . Jefferson loved France 
with a servile devotion." (4, Winning of the 
West, 271.) 

"It was these two timid, well-meaning 
statesmen who now found themselves pitted 
against Napoleon and Napoleon's minister, 
Talleyrand ; against the greatest warrior and 
law-giver and against one of the greatest diplo- 
mats of modern times ; against two men, more- 
over, whose sodden lack of conscience, was 
but heightened by the contrast with their bril- 
liant genius and their power of character." 
(4, Winning of the West, 271.) 

Strangest of all, the two "timid, well-mean- 
ing statesmen" won in the contest with all this 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2j'X^ 

brilliancy and unscrupulousness. They got 
Napoleon's American empire for fifteen mil- 
lions of dollars and got it bloodlessly. 

"Napoleon was quite as incapable as any 
Spanish statesman or as Talleyrand himself, of 
so much as considering the question of breach 
of faith or loss of honor, if he could gain any 
advantage by sacrificing either." (4, Winning 
of the West. 271.) 

Making Jefferson's victory all the more re- 
markable. 

"It" (acquiring Louisiana) "was at the cost 
of violating every precept which they had pro- 
fessed to hold most dear, and of showing that 
their warfare on the Federalists had been 
waged on behalf of principles which they were 
obliged to confess were shams the moment 
they were put to the test." (4, Winning of 
the West, 282.) 

"The real history of the acquisition must tell 
of the great westward movement begun in 
1769, and not merely of the feeble diplomacy 
of Jefferson's administration." (Winning of 
the West, Vol. 4, page 261.) 

One may take that view of the matter if 
one be looking into the causes of policies and 
leadership, but if one does take that view, he 
eliminates all heroes and weaklings,, all devils 
and saints, for everything in history is due to 
forces which no man can control or even di- 
rect. If AVashington deserves credit for leader- 
ship in the Revolutionary war, or Hamilton in 
statesmanship afterward, then we cannot deny 
Jefferson the honors due his leadership. 



274 RoOSftVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 

It requires a historian, like Roosevelt, of 
great discernment to see how acquiring prac- 
tically uninhabited contiguous territory, in 
which a young, vigorous, democratic nation 
might grow and become strong, violated any 
democratic principle. Others beside Roose- 
velt see democracy in carrying out the will of 
the people, and the people clamored for the 
acquisition of Louisiana. Federalists opposed 
this very thing, but Jefferson in doing it, justi- 
fied the Federalists. It is really too bad that 
some way cannot be found to discredit Jeffer- 
son in the Louisiana purchase. This weakling 
who overcame the strongest ; this man who 
strangely surrendered to Federalistic principles 
in doing what the Federalists fought tooth and 
nail. Queer fellow this Jefferson. Shameful 
that Hamilton could not have acquired Louisi- 
ana instead of opposing it. Roosevelt found 
much fault with Washington, and later with 
Jefferson, for not going to war with Spain and 
taking Louisiana. That might have been the 
trouble. Sufficient blood was not shed in its 
acquisition. 

*Tn the year 1784 Jefferson put into his draft 
of the ordinance of that year a clause prohibit- 
ing slavery in all the western territory south 
as well as north of the Ohio river." (3, Win- 
ning of the West, 254.) 

"Jefferson, who never understood anything 
about warfare, being a timid man, and who be- 
longed to the visionary school who always de- 
nounced the army and navy, was given a legiti- 
mate execuse to criticize the regulars." (For 



Roosevelt and the Republic 275 

failure in the West.) (3, Winning of the 
West, 278.) 

**The absolute terror with which even mod- 
erate Federalists had viewed the victory of the 
democrats was in a sense justified for the lead- 
ers who led the Democrats to triumph, were 
the very men who had fought, tooth and nail, 
against every measure necessary to make us 
a free, orderly and powerful nation." (Cen- 
tralized.) (Roosevelt's Life of Morris.) 

''We have, indeed, a set of madmen in the 
administration and they will do many foolish 
things," said Morris, as Roosevelt quotes ap- 
provingly. 

''The indignation naturally excited by the 
utter weakness and folly of Jefferson's second 
term, and the pitiable incompetence shown by 
him and his successor," justified Morris' opin- 
ion. (Roosevelt's Life of Morris, page 345.) 

"For the sin of burning a few public build- 
ings was as nothing compared with the cow- 
ardly infamy of which politicians of the stripe 
of Jefferson and Madison and the people whom 
they represented were guilty in not making 
ready by sea and land to protect their capital 
and in not exacting vengeance for their destruc- 
tion." (4, Winning of the West, 98.) | 

"Jefferson had no gift for government. He 
was singularly deficient in masterful states- 
manship of the kind imperatively needed by 
any nation which wishes to hold an honorable 
place among the nations." (4, Winning of the 
West, 196.) 

"This w^ar (1812) was in itself eminently 



276 Roosevelt and the Republic 

necessary and proper, and was excellent In its 
results, but it was attended with incidents of 
shame and disgrace to America, for which Jef- 
ferson and Madison and their political friends 
and supporters among the politicians and the 
people have never received a sufficiently severe 
condemnation." (4, Winning of the West, 

196.) 

"They" (sympathizers with the French 
Revolution) ''were already looking to Jeffer- 
son for their leader, and Jefferson, though at 
the time Secretary of State under Washington, 
was secretly encouraging them, and playing a 
very discreditable part toward his chief." (4, 
Winning of the West, 176.) 

"Marchand was agent for the French min- 
ister (Genet), though nominally his visit was 
undertaken on purely scientific grounds. Jef- 
ferson's course in the matter was characteristic. 
Openly he was endeavoring in a perfunctory 
manner to carry out Washington's policy of 
strict neutrality between France and England, 
but secretly he was engaged in tortuous in- 
trigues against Washington and was thwarting 
his wishes as far as he dared in regard to 
Genet. It is impossible that he could have 
been really misled as to Marchand's charac- 
ter," etc. (4 Winning of the West, 179.) 

"Jefferson was the father of nullification and 
therefore of secession. He used the word nul- 
lification in the original draft which he sup- 
plied to the Kentucky legislature, and though 
that body struck it out of the resolutions which 
they passed in 1798, they inserted it in those 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2*]f 

of the following year. This was done mainly 
as an unscrupulous party move on Jefferson's 
part, and when his side came into power he 
became a firm upholder of the Union ; and be- 
ing constitutionally unable to put a proper 
value on truthfulness, he even denied that his 
resolutions could be construed to favor nullifi- 
cation, though they could by no possibility be 
construed to mean anything else." (Roose- 
velt's Life of Benton, page 95.) 

Students of the Constitutional Convention 
know, and it is to be presumed that Historian 
Roosevelt is such a student, that in every de- 
bate where the proposed powers of the gov- 
ernment were considered, action just such as 
that taken by Kentucky and Virginia was con- 
templated on the part of the states where there 
was a question of the abuse of power by the 
Federal government. Such action was consti- 
tutional from the standpoint of the framers of 
the document. The principle of it was ap- 
pealed to in the Hartford convention as well as 
in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. 
Neither secession nor nullification in the sense 
afterward urged in South Carolina was intend- 
ed in Virginia and Kentucky at that time. It 
was the only method then known by which the 
abuse of Federal power could be protested 
against and checked. Such at least is the ex- 
planation of historians who are not especially 
committed to finding unworthy motives for 
every act of Jefferson. Historian Roosevelt 
may know better. 

If Roosevelt found in the Democratic leader 



278 Roosevelt and the Republic 

a man "constitutionally unable to put a proper 
value upon truthfulness," he found the motives 
of the democratic masses who followed him 
still meaner and more despicable. ''Four-fifths 
of the talent ability and good sense of the coun- 
try," he said, "were to be found in the Federal- 
ist ranks." "An assault upon what Benton 
calls the money power is apt to be popular in 
a democratic republic, partly on account of the 
vague fear which the poorer and more ignorant 
voters regard a powerful institution whose 
workings they do not understand, and partly 
on account of the jealousy they feel toward 
those who are better ofif than themselves." 

"Federalists passed the judiciary bill sup- 
planting local courts, and Adams promptly 
used his remaining days in filling the offices." 
Roosevelt did not approve of this. It was an 
outrage, but the eflfect was all right. In fact 
Jefferson's secretary had to stop the appoint- 
ment proceeding at midnight on the day of in- 
auguration. 

There were Federalists in every public place 
in the government. It was most important 
that the Federalists should grasp the judiciary 
before they let go. Not a follower of Jeffer- 
son was in office. 

Yet John Adams, you know, was not a 
spoilsman. As a patriot at the head of the 
party containing four-fifths of the talent and 
good sense of the country, it was his bounden 
duty to place his partisans in office, and to ex- 
clude Jefferson's followers rigidly. This was 



Roosevelt and the Republic 279 

not spoils, it was patriotism. Jefferson, Roose- 
velt says, introduced the spoils system. 

As a matter of fact, it looks as though Jef- 
ferson was sufficient of a wild-eyed reformer 
to anticipate Roosevelt something more than 
three-fourths of a century in advocating the 
merit system. He laid down the principle that 
office-holders who did well would not be dis- 
turbed and he carried it out. He did remove 
many of Adams' appointees for what was later 
called "offensive partisanship." Jefferson put 
his followers in place in sufficient number to 
be sure of sympathetic co-operation in carry- 
ing out his policies. 

Jefferson was meeting a critical situation for 
Democrats. For nearly twelve years the young 
Republic had been under influences hostile to 
popular government. Hamilton had colored 
all of Washington's policies, and had dominat- 
ed the early years of Adams' administration. 
Jefferson alone withstood this reactionary 
wave. When he came into power, he took 
steps to regain so far as possible the lost 
ground. 

To proper, gentlemanly, scholarly historians, 
who share Hamilton's contempt for self-gov- 
ernment, Jefferson must always appear as a 
misguided mischief-maker. Theodore Roose- 
velt, enlightened though he may be, can claim 
no great merit, therefore, in seeing Jefferson's 
smallness and meanness. That others should 
take different views, however, is most difficult 
for him to understand. Such misguided per- 
jsons hold that in his "Summary View of the 



28o Roosevelt and the Republic 

Rights of British America," Jefferson blew the 
first bugle blast for liberty and independence 
when he said: "The British Parliament has 
no right to exercise authority over us." This 
was at a time when Otis, Henry, Lee and 
Washington were talking compromise. 

Many vulgar persons consider the "Declara- 
tion of Independence," Jefferson's work, the 
greatest charter of human rights ever produced 
by mind and pen. In the origmal draft of that 
charter black slavery was denounced as Lin- 
coln denounced it eighty years afterward. 

Jefferson, they contend, disestablished the 
church in Virginia, thus giving full effect to 
religious liberty. The British, Hamilton's 
ideals in government, have not yet reached that 
happy state, although a century and a quarter 
have gone by. It was he who did away with 
primogeniture and entail, things which still 
curse that perfect Britain. By such action Jef- 
ferson opened to those who work it the much 
needed land. Thus did he destroy at a blow 
the foundation of caste in one of the greatest of 
American states. 

Virginia's archaic laws were turned by Jef- 
ferson into an enlightened code, his admirers 
say. 

Jefferson was an original abolitionist, as 
even Roosevelt testifies. 

George Rogers Clark, at the instance of Jef- 
ferson, made his famous expedition which held 
the northern Ohio valley for the United States. 
Fort Jeft'erson, built by this pioneer at the in- 
stance of Jefferson, was the first tangible evi- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2§i 

dence of title made good to the east bank of 
the Mississippi. 

If Jefferson while governor of Virginia per- 
mitted the British to ravage the state, his ad- 
mirers say, it was because Virginia's fighting 
men were operating in other fields. There were 
no troops available for Jefferson, who was not 
a military genius. 

Jefferson is credited with having written the 
address of Congress to General Washington. 

In collaboration with Gouverneur -Morris, 
Jefferson originated our present monetary sys- 
tem. He it was who originally organized the 
Treasury Department, or at least made the 
plans. His ordinance of the northwest terri- 
tory contained the germ of the plan for mak- 
ing new states. 

John Adams called Jefferson the father of 
the American navy. It was Jefferson, the 
timid, inefficient, who broke up the practice 
then universal in the West, of paying tribute 
to the "Barbary pirates," a practice submitted 
to in his day by the strongest states in the 
world. He put a period to the humiliation of 
American naval officers becoming messengers 
for Mohammedan potentates. 

Jefferson's advice and sympathy was of 
great value to the French patriots, struggling 
for liberty. 

He was among the leaders who insisted upon 
a bill of rights in the constitution of the United 
States. 

In Washington's cabinet Jefferson fought, 
practically alone, the battle for Democracy. 



282 Roosevelt and the Republic 

It was he who opposed the Hamiltonian plan 
of giving wealthy manufacturers the right to 
tax the American people for the benefit of the 
manufacturers. Hamilton's national bank, 
which gave into private hands the finances 
and the money of the country, was opposed by 
Jefiferson. He fought against an irresponsible 
judiciary. By sheer persistent force and de- 
votion to principle he led the revolt against 
centralization and in favor of popular liberty 
which gave this nation a democratic trend pre- 
served to this day. 

Admirers of Thomas Jefiferson contend that 
in his treatment of Genet, he merely tried to 
pay a debt of gratitude which America owed 
France, the republic struggling, as our repub- 
lic had struggled against the kingly order of 
the world. France asked only sympathy and 
such financial aid as we could give her. Amer- 
ica's people were willing. 

Great Britain had broken its treaty with us 
and in a thousand ways treated us with con- 
tempt. Our border settlers, our seamen, our 
merchantmen, were safe neither in person nor 
property. American citizenship was no pro- 
tection to the sailor whom England wished to 
impress. Never in all our history has this na- 
tion submitted to such contemptuous ar- 
rogance as this nation submitted to from 
Great Britain in the early years of our exist- 
ence. 

Hamilton's policy in swallowing these in- 
sults was apparently as cowardly as it was un- 
wise. Had we again taken sides with France 



Roosevelt and the Republic 283 

we would have fought Britain supported by a 
powerful ally. As it turned out, we fought 
Great Britain alone. Hamilton's policy of 
peace at any price with our barbarous step- 
mother, permitted Great Britain to dispose of 
France first and then bring its whole military 
power against this country. Jefferson is cer- 
tainly not responsible for this supineness. 

Jefferson is responsible for the government 
mints. 

When the "Holy Alliance" (the most un- 
holy ever conceived among nations) threat- 
ened to conquer the colonies of Spain which 
had gained their independence, President Mon- 
roe wrote Jefferson for advice. Under date of 
October 23, 1823, Jefferson replied to Monroe's 
letter. He wrote : 

*'The question presented by the letter you 
have sent me is the most momentous that has 
been offered to my contemplation since the 
Declaration of Independence. That made us 
a nation; this sets our compass and points the 
course which we are to steer through the ocean 
of time. Our first and fundamental maxim 
should be never to entangle ourselves in the 
broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer 
Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic af- 
fairs. America — North and South — has inter- 
ests distinct from those of Europe. St/ *hould 
therefore have a system of her own. While 
Europe is laboring to become the domicile o^ 
despotism, our endeavor should surely be to 
make our hemisphere the domicile of free- 
dom." He would join with England in guar- 



284 Roosevelt and the Republic 

anteeing South American independence. He 
would have the United States acquire Cuba. 
He held that a declaration should be issued 
to the effect that *'we would oppose with all 
our means the forcible interposition of any 
other power as auxiliary, stipendary, or under 
any other form or pretext, and more espe- 
cially their transfer to any other power by con- 
quest, cession, or acquisition in any other 
way." 

This letter announces every essential ele- 
ment of the Monroe doctrine, and is its first 
recorded announcement. In December of 
that year it appeared in President Monroe's 
message. It did indeed mean more for demo- 
cratic government than any declaration since 
the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson inaugurated public improvements 
in 1808 in undertaking the construction of the 
Cumberland road and the improvement of riv- 
ers and canals. 

Louisiana came to us through the far-seeing 
statesmanship of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson 
saw that as against Spain Louisiana must in- 
evitably be ours. He recognized that in the 
hands of France it was a menace. If it should 
go into the hands of England, it would prob- 
ably have remained like Canada, a barrier to 
the development of the great Republic. He 
acted at exactly the proper moment, when the 
empire could be secured without bloodshed 
and at the smallest cost. 

Jefferson was a pioneer in general state edu- 
cation, the principle of our public school. He 



Roosevelt and the Republic 2S5 

founded the University of Virginia, with its 
ideal freedom of government. 

It w^as Jefferson w^ho sent Lewis and Clark 
to explore the far Northwest, thus establish- 
ing a precedent for scientific research by the 
government and laying the foundation for our 
claim to Oregon. 

Jefferson was a pioneer in scientific farming 
and other practical experimentation. 

More important than all these, Jefferson 
found the liberties for which the American 
people fought and suffered slipping aAvay from 
them, Hamilton in full control, Washington 
sympathetic. An aristocracy being built up. 
America being placed in the hands of a "gov- 
erning class." There were coaches and six, 
levees, formality and flummery of the Euro- 
pean courts. Directing it all was the man to 
whom democracy was but "pork still, though 
with a change of sauce." 

Hamilton was frankly corrupt in politics. 
He intrigued against everybody, kept faith 
with few. An intelligent author makes Ham- 
ilton the father of plutocracy, the lobby, and 
the trust. Our government was frankly be- 
coming a government of and for the rich. All 
classes not associated with the narrow Fed- 
eralist clique were, under Adams, denied a 
place in the government. Implied powers 
were being invoked to give autocratic author- 
ity to the judiciary, and enlarge the scope of 
Federal control. 

Jefferson was one of the very few men of 
his time who saw the trend of the ruling forces 



2% Roosevelt and the Republic 

in the Federal government. Immediately he 
had satisfied himself that Hamilton v^as bent 
upon destroying democratic government, he 
took up the gage of battle. Almost alone 
among the leaders of the time, he battled for 
pure democratic ideals. With heroic tenacity, 
v^rith supreme intelligence, v^ith splendid cour- 
age, he fought the powers of aristocracy gath- 
ered under the august shadow of Washington. 
Jefferson won. It was one of the epochal vic- 
tories of history. He won because the Ameri- 
can people were essentially democratic despite 
their Rulers. This victory is the one thing no 
disciple of Hamilton can forgive. It is Jeffer- 
son's unpardonable sin. This fully explains 
the attitude of Theodore Roosevelt toward 
Jefferson. 

To Jefferson more than to any other one 
man is it due that the Revolutionary war was 
not fought in vain. By his acts, by his in- 
fluence, but more than all, by his pure demo- 
cratic ideals, he has exerted greater influence 
than any other man in the history of the Re- 
public. As a prophet statesman Jefferson 
towers above even Washington and Lincoln. 
No other name in the history of the Republic 
is worthy of mention with his. 

It does not matter so much that Jefferson 
was not a great warrior, or that in mere execu- 
tive routine there were others who could claim 
greater efficiency. Ideas are the real motive 
force of civilization. The things which any \ 
one man can do are insignificant indeed. The I 
things which he., can inspire may be truly/ 



Roosevelt and the Republic 287 

monumental, living through all the ages and 
growing in power as the years go by. 

But even on the score of actual achievement, 
as has been amply shown in the foregoing, Jef- 
ferson towers above other American states- 
men. But the thing upon which his fame rests 
is his democracy. He saw to it that monarchy, 
aristocracy and social caste had to fight for 
their foothold on American soil. He scotched 
militarism almost as soon as it showed its 
head. If any other public man in the history 
of America can show such wealth of achieve- 
ment, such tremendous influence, such undy- 
ing ideals, it would be interesting to have 
him pointed out. 

Lincoln, next to Jefiferson, probably the 
greatest of all great men in our Republic, had 
no such mean idea of Thomas Jefiferson as has 
Theodore Roosevelt. To be sure, Lincoln was 
somewhat lacking in the aristocratic compre- 
hension of our executive of to-day. He might 
not have known real greatness. Lincoln said : 

**But soberly, it is no child's play to save the 
principles of Jefferson from total overthrow 
in this nation. One would state with great 
confidence that he could convince any sane 
child >|hat the simpler propositions of Euclid 
are true ; but nevertheless he would fail utter- 
ly with one who should deny the definitions 
and the axioms. The principles of Jefferson 
are the definitions and axioms of free society. 
And yet they are denied and evaded with no 
small show of success. One dashingl)^ calls 
them 'glittering generalities/ Another bluntly 



288 Roosevelt and the Republic 

calls them 'self-evident lies.' Others insidi- 
ously argue that they apply to 'superior races.' 
These expressions differing in form are identi- 
cal in object and effect, the supplanting the 
principles of free government and restoring 
those of classification, caste and legitimacy. 
They would delight a convocation of crowned 
heads, plotting against the people. They are 
the vanguard, the miners and sappers of re- 
turning despotism. We must repulse them or 
they will subjugate us. This is a world of 
compensation, and he who would be no slave 
must consent to have no slave. Those who 
deny freedom to others deserve it not for 
themselves, and under a just God cannot long 
retain it. All honor to Jefferson, the man who 
in the concrete struggle for national inde- 
pendence by a single people, had the coolness, 
forecast and capacity to introduce into a mere- 
ly revolutionary document, an abstract truth, 
applicable to all men and all times, and so to 
embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming 
days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling 
block to the very harbingers of reappearing 
tyranny and oppression." 

Letter to N. L. Pierce and others, by 
Abraham Lincoln, dated at Springfield, 111., 
April 6, 1859. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 289 



CHAPTER XXV. 

OUR "ignorant" president, ANDREW JACKSON. 

Jefferson, as Roosevelt saw him, was our 
weakest President, and, taken all in all, our 
most despicable President. Jackson was but a 
trifle better. Ignorance rather than weakness 
was his fault. The gang of dolts and clod- 
hoppers making up his followers only excited 
the pitying scorn of Theodore Roosevelt. Al- 
together incomprehensible to him was it that 
the American people should show such fatuous 
idiocy as to turn their backs upon the aristo- 
cratic propriety of the younger Adams and his 
followers, and give themselves over to Jack- 
son's Goths and Vandals. Mr. Roosevelt says : 

"The classes in which were to be found al- 
most all of the learning, the talent, the busi- 
ness activity and the inherited wealth and re- 
finement of the country, had hitherto contrib- 
uted much to the body of its rulers." There 
v^as one hiatus in this altogether proper ar- 
rangement when Jefferson, and his "skillful po- 
litical workers" carried the day by "marshall- 
ing that unwieldy and hitherto disunited host 
of voters who were inferior in intelligence to 
their fellows." 

"The Jacksonian Democracy stood for revolt 



290 Roosevelt and the Republic 

against these rulers ; its leaders, as well as 
their followers, all came from the mass of the 
people. . . . There was nothing to be said 
against the rulers of the day. . . . They 
were dismissed, not because the voters could 
truthfully allege any wrong-doing whatsoever 
against them, but solely because in their pure- 
ly private and personal feelings and habits of 
life, they were supposed to differ from the 
mass of the people. This was such an outrage- 
ously absurd feeling that the very men who 
wQve actuated by it . . . were ashamed of 
it," etc. 

Roosevelt saw with the shame, which every 
cultured American must feel, the replacing of 
aristocratic propriety by the mob rule of dem- 
ocracy. It did not matter in the least that 
the democratic masses were up in arms against 
the special interests which were then for the 
first time becoming an important factor in the 
nation. They were embodied in the National 
Bank and the protective tariff programme. 
The fact that mass democracy noisily revolted 
against what it looked upon as an insolent, 
centralizing aristocracy of "inherited wealth" 
and family, makes the uprising all the more 
objectionable to those who appreciate, as 
Roosevelt does, the importance of respectabil- 
ity in the "governing class." To Roosevelt it 
was all merely a question of personal wrong- 
doing. No institutional problems can be con- 
sidered for a moment. 

Democrats of to-day profess to see in Jack- 
son's victories a militant protest against the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 291 

anti-democratic policies of Adams and Henry 
Clay. It was then, as they view it, that the 
masses gained full control at .Washington. 
Then for the first time they became part of 
the government. A turbulent, swelling demo- 
cratic deluge submerged the distinctive *'gov- 
erning class." Vitalizing was the sympathy 
which with Jackson throbbed and swelled into 
the very White House, for the masses and the 
government were at length one, to remain one 
until the days of Roosevelt's administration, 
when the country was again to know a proper 
"governing class" of rich, elegant, cultured 
gentlemen. Jefferson, as democrats see him, 
saved the democratic ideal; Jackson helped 
realize it. 

"The two great Democratic victories," said 
Roosevelt, "had little in common, almost as 
little as had the two great leaders under whose 
auspices they were respectively won — and few 
men were ever more unlike than the scholarly, 
timid, shifty doctrinaire, who supplanted the 
Elder Adams, and the ignorant, headstrong 
and straight-forward soldier who was victor 
over the younger. The change was the de- 
liberate choice of the great mass of the people, 
and that it was one for the worse was then 
and ever since the opinion of most thinking 
men," etc. (Who would not be thinking men 
if they did not agree with Roosevelt.) 

As a conscientious historian, Roosevelt felt 
that he could not make too clear the inevitable 
connection between i.sfnorance and democracy. 
In speaking of Jefferson's followers he put 



2g2 Roosevelt and the Republic 

strong emphasis upon this view. Again the 
same rule holds as to the Jackson horde : 

"The Jacksonian Democracy held in its 
ranks the mass of ignorance of the country; 
besides, such an organization requires in order 
to do its most effective work, to have as its 
leader and figurehead a man who really has a 
great hold on the people at large, and yet can 
be managed by such politicians as possessed 
the requisite adroitness ; and Jackson fulfilled 
both of these conditions." (Roosevelt's Life 
of Benton, page 95.) 

That Andrew Jackson was a tool and a 
figurehead will probably be news to other his- 
torians. Roosevelt knew. 

Jackson had glimpses of the light. Roose- 
velt says: "Jackson promptly vetoed the bill 
in a message to Congress which stated some 
truths forcibly and fearlessly, which developed 
some very queer constitutional and financial 
theories, and contained a number of absurdi- 
ties, evidently put in not for the benefit of 
the Senate but to influence votes at the coming 
presidential election." (Life of Benton, page 
127.) 

Roosevelt knew Jackson's motives were 
mean. He had his doubts about the wisdom of 
Jackson's attack upon the politico-financial 
machine centered in the National Bank ; how- 
ever, Roosevelt hastens to say: "But the 
presidential power of veto is among the best 
features of our government." 

Roosevelt sees the drollery of Benton's dic- 
tum that the President was the tribune of the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 293 

people. Benton, unfortunately, was not pres- 
ent to see Roosevelt, the President, turn the 
tables upon Roosevelt the historian when he 
appealed to "public opinion," whose delphic 
voice newspaper-toned is heard as an echo of 
the listener, to uphold him in riding rough- 
shod over Congress. Such pleasantries are un- 
avoidable in a President who "does things." 

"If there ever was a wholly irrational state 
of mind," says Roosevelt, historian, "it was 
that in which the Jacksonians constantly kept 
themselves. Every canvass on the part of 
Jackson was full of sound, fury and excite- 
ment, of appeals to ttie passions, prejudices 
and feelings, but never to the reason of the 
hearers. A speech for him was usually a fran- 
tic denunciation of whoever or whatever op- 
posed him, coupled with fulsome adulation of 
the old hero. . . . The cool judgment of 
the country was apt to be against them." 
(Life of Benton, 135.) 

To appreciate fully the distress which must 
have been caused the modest, meek and retir- 
ins: Mr. Roosevelt, one should study his own 
quiet political methods. His generosity to his 
opponents as instanced in his Review of Re- 
views article in September, 1896, and his 
speeches in 1896 and 1900. The man who 
toured New York with a band of Rough Riders 
must have been mortally oflfended with this 
"hero" business. Think of calling a tin soldier 
like Andrew Jackson a hero when no stronger 
compliment could be paid to a man with a 
military record like Theodore Roosevelt. How 



294 Roosevelt and the Republic 

excruciating must be sound, fury and excite- 
ment to the ears of Mr. Roosevelt! 

"Van Buren faithfully served the mammon 
of unrighteousness, both in his own state and 
later at Washington ; and he had his reward, 
for he advanced to the highest office in the 
gift of the nation. He had no reason to blame 
his own conduct for his final downfall ; he got 
just as far along as he could possibly get; he 
succeeded because of, not in spite of, his moral 
shortcomings ; if he had always governed his 
actions by a high moral standard he would 
probably never have been heard of." 

''Jackson liked Van Buren because the lat- 
ter had served him both personally and politi- 
callv. Indeed Jackson was incapable of dis- 
tinguishing between a political and a personal 
service." (Life of Benton, i8i and 187.) 

President Roosevelt subjected himself to the 
same unkind remark when, for personal ser- 
vice, he gave a cabinet position to an excellent 
gentleman of Tyler-like littleness. This little 
man, they found out, Roosevelt advanced from 
one important post to another of more impor- 
tance with no regard, apparently, to the ef- 
ficient management of the positions, but rather 
with an eye to put the friend in line for lucra- 
tive employment in the financial world. 

Persons who make remarks of that kind 
about President Roosevelt do not distins^uish 
rightly. Jackson was just an ignorant politician 
with no high and holy ideals of civil service, 
while Roosevelt with fine moral discrimination 
has said repeatedly that public appointments 



koOSEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 295 

for personal or political considerations is just 
plain bribery. 

Jackson might have loved Van Buren as 
Roosevelt loved his Mortons, Littauers, Loom- 
ises, Murrays. There is an interesting parallel 
between the methods of Andrew Jackson, as 
disclosed by historian Roosevelt, and the later 
methods of President Roosevelt. This line of 
resemblance between the ignorant democrat of 
the thirties and the scholarly statesman of the 
next century ran from methods of campaigning 
and of using public popularity, even to the re- 
warding of political and personal services with 
public place. 

''The charge of extravagance was one of the 
least charges urged against the Jacksonian 
Democrats during the last days of their rule. 
While they had been in power, the character 
of the public service deteriorated frightfully, 
both as regards its efficiency and infinitel}^ 
more as regards its honesty, and under Van 
Buren the amount of money taken by the pub- 
lic officers as compared with the amount hand- 
ed into the treasury was greater than ever be- 
fore or since. For this the Jacksonians were 
solely and absolutely responsible ; they drove 
out the merit system of making appointments 
and introduced the spoils system in its place; 
and under the latter they chose a peculiarly 
dishonest and incapable set of officers whose 
sole recommendation was to be found in the 
trickery and low cunning which enabled them 
to manage ignorant voters who formed the 
backbone of the Jackson party. The states- 



296 Roosevelt and the Republic 

men of Democracy in later years forgot the 
good deeds of the Jacksonians; they lost their 
attachment to the Union, and abandoned their 
championship of hard money; but they never 
ceased to cling to the worst legacy their pre- 
decessors had left them. The engrafting of 
the spoils system upon our government was 
of all the results of Jacksonian rule, the one 
which was most permanent in its effects." 
(Life of Benton, page 231.) 

We can appreciate better the extravagance 
of Jackson and Van Buren when we consider 
that Federal taxes during their administration 
varied from about eighty cents to one dollar 
and seventy-five cents per inhabitant during 
their terms of office. The larger figure is 
seven-eighths of the per-capita tax levied for 
the support of President Roosevelt's army and 
navy, and varied from about one-sixth to one- 
fourth of the present Federal taxation. The 
Federal government is doing now just about 
what it did in Jackson's time, with compara- 
tively unimportant exceptions. It still admin- 
isters justice, provides for the common de- 
icnse and promotes the general welfare. To 
>)e sure, Jackson did not in his day have all 
ihe sapient bureaus making frantic efforts to 
consume wood pulp and keep the public print- 
er busy. Men versed in "trickery and low cun- 
ning" do not seem to have had any such ef- 
ficient method of making government expens- 
ive as the high-minded scholarly gentlemen 
of the present time who dote upon investiga- 
tions, plethoric reports and red-tape. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 297 

_ Spoils must have loomed big in Jackson's 
time. Jackson had actually about one-half the 
number of persons in the whole executive ser- 
vices under him that Theodore Roosevelt has 
now in the class of presidential appointees. 
The salary fund of Jackson's executive de- 
partment was something like three to four 
millions against Roosevelt's one hundred and 
twenty millions of dollars. Thirty men are 
appointed under Roosevelt outside of the 
classified service for one appointed under An- 
drew Jackson. Roosevelt's ''bribery chest" 
has grown mightily in recent years. And the 
public service — it has grown a hundred fold 
since Jackson, while the population has in- 
creased about six fold ! 

Vulgar democrats, who have not the per- 
spective of a scholar like Roosevelt, consider 
the merit system a matter of very small mo- 
ment in Jackson's day compared with the 
problems he met and solved — compared with 
the mighty impetus which Jackson and his 
"ignorant and knavishly low followers" gave 
toward democracy. They feel, too, that not 
only were Jackson's tenets not forgotten by 
democracy, if one spells it with a small "d," 
but many of the men who rejoiced with the 
iron Tennesseean followed the patient Ken- 
tuckian through the struggle which saved the 
Union. Historian Roosevelt knows better. 



298 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

ROOSEVELT DISTRUSTS DEMOCRACY. 

Alexander Hamilton frankly sneered at 
democratic republican government. To him it 
was ''pork still, though with a change of 
sauce." 

In this respect Roosevelt follows Hamilton. 
Both have indicated their objections to a dem- 
ocratic republic, and they are nearly identical. 
Roosevelt has not spoken so frankly as Ham- 
ilton, but from numerous references to its 
foundation principles he undoubtedly holds 
self-government to be a delusion. The masses 
cannot be given real power. They must have 
their government handed down to them by 
their betters. 

*'We have," said Gouverneur Morris, speak- 
ing of Jefferson's administration, ''indeed a set 
of madmen in the administration, and they will 
do many foolish things." 

Commenting upon this enlightened Morris 
opinion Roosevelt remarks : 

"He took an EQUALLY JUST view of our 
political system, saying that in adopting a re- 
publican form of government he not only took 
it as a man does his wife, for better or for 
.worse, but what few men do with their wives, 



Roosevelt and the Republic 299 

knowing all of its bad qualities." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Morris, page 344.) 

"In their state constitutions, the hard-work- 
inpf backwoods farmers showed a conservative 
spirit which would seem strange to the radical 
democracy of the western states to-day. 
. . . Representation was proportioned, not 
to the population at large, but to the citizens 
who paid taxes, for persons with some little 
property were still considered to be the right- 
ful depositories of political power. . . . But 
it (the constitution) contained some unwise 
and unjust provisions." (Roosevelt's Win- 
ning of the West, vol. 4, page 170.) 

Unfortunate was it indeed that these farm- 
ers did not hand down to posterity their meth- 
od of identifying the persons who really did 
pay the taxes. 

"Her" (Kentucky's) "people were saturated 
with the ideas of those doctrinaire politicians 
of whom Jefferson was the chief. . . . Their 
influence in America was wholly and distinctly 
evil ; save that by a series of accidents they 
became the especial champions of the west- 
ward extension of the nation and in conse- 
quence were identified with a movement all 
essential to the nation's well-being." (Win- 
ning of the West, vol. 4, pages 176-177.) 

"St. Clair's supporters struggled to keep the 
territory (Ohio) from statehood, and proposed 
to cut it down in size, nominally because they 
deemed the extent of the territory too great 
for governmental purposes, but really because 
they distrusted the people and did not wish 



300 Roosevelt and the Republic 

them to take the government into their own 
hands. . . ." 

"They" (St. Clair in Ohio and Sargeant in 
Mississippi) "were both high-minded men, 
with SOUND IDEAS on government and 
policy" (their distrust of the people leaves no 
doubt of this), "though Sargeant was the abler 
of the two; but they were out of touch with 
the westerners." "They distrusted the frontier 
folk, and were bitterly doubted in turn." 
(Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. 4, 
pages 215 and 216.) 

"The Jeffersonian Republican party did 
much that was evil, and it advocated govern- 
mental principles of such utter folly" (man- 
hood suffrage and self-government) "that the 
party itself was obliged to abandon them." 
. . . It "only clung to them long enough to 
do lasting and serious damage to the country." 
(Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. 4, 
page 218.) 

Jefferson and his followers believed that the 
Westerners should be permitted to govern 
themselves. Hamilton and his followers op- 
posed it. The West followed Jefferson, much 
to the scandalization of good Historian Roose- 
velt. 

"The essential point was that they" (the 
Westerners) "had been GIVEN the right of 
self government. . . . Whether wise or not, 
it was inevitable. . . . When Ohio became a 
state it adopted a very foolish constitution." 
(Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. 4, 
pages 218 and 219.) 



Roosevelt and the Republic 301 

Roosevelt regretted that the Federalists did 
not accept the inevitable "GIVE" self-govern- 
ment to the West, remain in power and modify 
the v^hole government to suit themselves. 

"A narrow, uneducated, honest countryman, 
especially in the backwoods, then looked upon 
a lawyer with smothered envy and admiration, 
but always with jealousy, suspicion and dis- 
like, much as does his successors to this day 
look upon bankers and railroad men." 
(Roosevelt's Winning of the West, vol. i, 
page 167.) 

Mr. Roosevelt was commenting on the con- 
stitution drawn so awkwardly by the evil- 
minded, envious, jealous farmers of "Frank- 
land," in which they excluded lawyers from 
office. It made an excellent occasion for a re- 
buke to their vicious successors who did not 
love with a sufficiently ardent passion the good 
and disinterested bankers and railway owners 
Avho so unselfishly look after the welfare of the 
farmers with an especial care. 

"But it must be noted that the difficulty in 
the Hawaiian islands resulted not so much 
from the establishment of a popular assembly, 
as from an undue extension of the electoral 
franchise. ... In the Philippines the fran- 
chise has been restricted and duly guarded." 
(Civil Government in the Philippines, page 

95.) ^ 

Elective franchise in the Philippines has 

been so restricted as to shut out the great mass ! 

of the inhabitants. . '; 

'They" (the English of Cromwell's time). 



302 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"were not fit to govern themselves unaided ; 
such fitness is not a god-given natural right, 
but comes to a race only through the slow 
growth of centuries and then only to those 
races which possess an immense reserve fund 
of strength, common sense and morality.'' 
(Roosevelt's Life of Cromwell, page lOO.) 

It is an interesting fact that savage com- 
munities, when not overgrown, have demo- 
cratic self-government, as had the early Saxons 
and later the American Indians. Probably the 
principal reason why the English at that time 
were not able to assert self-government was 
Cromwell's army and Cromwell's ambition to 
be dictator. 

"Free government is only for those nations 
that deserve it, and they lose all right to it by 
licentiousness no less than servility. . . . 
When people will not or cannot work to- 
gether ; when they permit groups of extremists 
to decline to accept anything which does not 
coincide with their own extreme views ; or 
when they let power slip from their hands 
through sheer supine indifiference, then they 
have themselves chiefly to blame if the power 
is grasped by stronger hands." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Cromwell, page 190.) 

In other words, a licentious, corrupt, ex- 
travagant, brutal aristocracy, if it have the 
power, is fully justified in committing whole- 
sale murder to sustain its glorious rule, but 
democracy must be quite perfect to justify its 
existence. Nicholas, because he could use 
"stronger hands," was fully justified in quench- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 303 

ing in blood the aspirations of the Russian 
masses for greater Hberty. One can easily see 
the beauties of this doctrine. It is most com- 
fortable — for tyrants. - — > 

*'If a nation, whether free or unfree, loses ( 
capacity for self-government, loses the spirit 
of sober and orderly liberty, then it has no 
cause to complain of tyranny." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Cromwell, page 237.) 

If! And always the tyrant is to decide when 
that capacity has been lost, and to enforce that 1 
decision even by an alien sword. » 

"He" (Benton) "was an enthusiastic be- 
liever in the extreme Jeflfersonian doctrinaire 
views, as to the will of the majority being al- 
ways right, and as to the moral perfection of 
the average voter. Like his fellow statesmen 
he failed to see the curious absurdity of sup- 
porting black slavery, and yet claiming uni- 
versal suffrage for the whites as a divine right, 
not as a mere matter of expediency, result- 
ing on the whole! better than any other method. 
He had not learned that a majority in a Dem- 
ocracy has no more right to tyrannize over 
a minority than under a different system, the 
latter would have to oppress the former; and 
that if there is a moral principle at stake, the 
saying that the voice of the people is the voice 
of God, may be quite as untrue and do quite 
as much mischief as the old theory of the di- 
vine right of kings." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Benton, page 122.) 

"He" (Morris) "denounced with fierce 
scorn, that they so richly merit, the despicable 



304 Roosevelt and the Republic 

demagogues and witless fools who teach that 
in all crises the voice of the majority must be 
implicitly obeyed, and that public men have 
only to carry out its will. Sounder and truer 
doctrine was never uttered." (Roosevelt's 
Life of Morris, page 344.) 

*'He" (Benton) "also speaks of Tyler hav- 
ing, when the Legislature of Virginia disap- 
proved of a course which he wished to follow, 
resigned his seat in obedience to the demo- 
cratic principle, which, according to his views, 
thus completely nullified the constitution pro- 
viding for a six years term service in the Sen- 
ate. In truth, Benton, like most other Jack- 
sonian and Jeffersonian leaders, became both 
foolish and illogical when he began to talk of 
the muddle of vague abstractions which he 
knew collectively as the Democratic prin- 
ciple." 

"Although not so bad as many of his school 
he had gradually worked himself up to the be- 
lief that it was almost impious to pay any- 
thing but servile heed to the will of the ma- 
jority, and was quite unconscious that to sur- 
render one's own manhood and judgment to 
the belief in the divine right of kings was only 
one degree more ignoble, and was not a 
shadow more logical and little more defensible, 
than it was blindly to deify the majority, not 
of the whole people, but merely a small frac- 
tion who happened to be a certain sex, to have 
reached a certain age, to belong to a certain 
race, and to fulfill some other conditions. In 
fact, there is no natural nor divine law in the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 305 

matter at all ; how large a proportion of the 
population should be trusted with the control 
of the government is a question of expediency 
merely. . . . There is no more natural 
right why a white man over twenty-one should 
vote than there is why a negro woman under 
eighteen should not. Civil rights and personal 
freedom are not terms that necessarily imply 
the right to vote." (Roosevelt's Life of Ben- 
ton, page 243.) 

Far be it from us to argue the case with 
President Roosevelt, or to find fault with his 
political notions. We simply want to under- 
stand him so as to be able to place him. 

If it were any other philosopher-historian, 
we should suspect him to have a strange par- 
tiality for the pastime of demolishing straw 
figures. Wonderful is the summary way in 
which he disposes of those mythical demo- 
crats who hold to these extraordinary but 
wholly fictitious doctrines. But several things 
must be understood before we join in Histor- 
ian Roosevelt's righteous denunciation. 

Neither Jefferson nor any intelligent fol- 
lower has held that the will of the majority 
is always right. 

They have no delusions as to the moral 
perfection of the average voter. 

Jefferson did not support black slavery. No 
true follower of Jefferson now supports or has 
supported black slavery. Certainly, Benton 
did not on principle. 

Neither Jefferson nor any follower contends 
that the majority has a right to TYRANNIZE 



3o6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

over anybody. They insisted upon a bill of 
rights in the constitution (omitted by Hamil- 
tonians) to prevent the possibiHty of such ty- 
ranny. Jeffersonians merely contend that 
under the American system the majority has a 
right to control the government. 
r"^ In the same w^ay it is necessary to fix with 
/ some certainty Historian Roosevelt's meaning 
' before we can apply the wisdom of his words 
upon the right of suffrage and the sanction of 
government. Stripped of his skillful but baf- 
fling qualifications, they seem to mean : 
i^ Human beings have no natural right to self- 

government. 

The sufifrage is not a right, but a privilege. 

A king has as much right to rule as a major- 
ity of the free citizens of a country. 

He is a witless fool who thinks the will of 
the majority in America should be obeyed. 

It is the duty of an officer in this republic to 
ignore the wishes of those who elected him 
and use his brief lease of authority to carry 
out his own policies even contrary to the will 
of the electors. 
^- This makes the issue between Theodore 
Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson reasonably 
clear. Each American can decide for himself 
whether he takes the Hamilton-Roosevelt 
view, justifying king and dictator, or that of 
Jefferson, holding to popular sovereignty. 
. ^ Historian Roosevelt leaves us perplexed 

with a harassing doubt as to the extent which 
persons not demagogues and witless fools 



Roosevelt and the Republic 307 

may ignore mandates of majorities in our re- 
public. 

Laws and constitutions in the United States 
and in every state and municipality provide 
that the will of the majority shall determine 
policies and fix laws. All officers are obliged 
to take oaths faithfully to uphold and execute 
laws as they find them. What officers, then, 
are to be a law unto themselves and to what 
extent? They, of course, are to judge whether 
the law is binding in any given case, but is the 
criterion to be their own sweet will? Or is 
this superiority to the law to be exercised only 
by certain grades of officers? Judges of the 
supreme court, governors, senators, and the 
President? Or is the President the only of- 
ficer above the law? Unfortunately, Historian 
Roosevelt has left this matter in a distressing 
state of doubt and perplexity for persons with- 
out his great insight. It is so difficult, too, 
to apply his rule to the Republic. If one were 
discussing Turkey and the Sultan's powers, 
one could much more easily harmonize this 
idea of placing the wills of rulers above the 
law. — 

Historian Roosevelt makes the situation all 
the more difficult by an occasional passage like 
this smacking of the Jefiferson taint: 

"Cromwell's extreme admirers treat his im- 
patience of delays and the shortcoming of 
ordinary constitutional and legal proceedings 
as signs of greatness. (Much as Roosevelt's 
extreme admirers treat the same qualities in 
him.) 'Tt was just the reverse. In great 



3o8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

crises it may be necessary to overturn con- 
stitutions and disregard statutes, just as it 
may be necessary to establish a vigilance com- 
mittee, or to take refuge in lynch law; but 
such a remedy is always dangerous, even when 
absolutely necessary, and the moment it be- 
comes the habitual remedy, it is proof that 
society is going backward. Of this retrogres- 
sion, the deeds of the strong man who sets 
himself above the law is partly the cause and 
partly the consequence, but they are always 
signs of decay." (Roosevelt's Life of Crom- 
well, page 54.) 

"With his death" (Cromwell's death) 
"came the chaos he had foreseen, but he had 
not foreseen that it could be averted only by 
the substitution of some form of self-govern- 
ment by the people for the arbitrary rule of 
one man, however great and good that man 
might be. . . . For some months there was 
confusion worse confounded, and the whole 
nation turned toward Charles II and the Stu- 
art kingship. . . ." 

"For twenty-eight shameful years the Res- 
toration lasted ; years of misgovernment and 
persecution at home and weakness abroad; 
oppression of the weak and obsequious ser- 
vility to the strong." (Roosevelt's Life of 
Cromwell, pages 232 and 233.) 

In this case arbitrary government failed, it 
seems, to bring "orderly liberty," and the 
"strong hands" bettered it little. 

r"All men are created equal and endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 



IROOSEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 309 

among' which are Hfe, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness." These are what the ''shifty doc- 
trinaire," Thomas Jefferson, mentioned as 
self-evident truths — in that archaic document, 
the "Declaration of Independence." 

We could not expect Theodore Roosevelt to 
accept such rubbish, but in deference to the 
deluded ones who accept Jefferson, it was un- 
fortunate that Historian Roosevelt did not 
make plain baffling queries which naturally 
arise: ' 

If all men are created equal (with equal 
civil rights) and endowed congenitally with 
the right to liberty, by what authority are 
some denied the civil right of suffrage which 
others enjoy? Who gives it to those to whom 
it is given f Who withholds it from those from 
whom it is withheld? By what authority is it 
given f By what authority is it withheld? 
How comes it that a man with civil rights 
equal only to my own can give me the suffrage 
or withhold it? 

If he can withhold from me the right to a 
voice in making the laws which control, pre- 
scribe or circumscribe my actions, does he not 
control my liberty, my happiness, my life? Do 
I not cease to be a free man? Am I not his 
slave, subject to his will? If he has greater 
rights than mine, whence come they? If I am 
not a free man, who has authority to enslave 
me and whence? By divine authority? Show 
me the commission. By might? Ah, I may 
learn to understand that ! That is the sanc- 
tion of Nicholas' rule. Because of possession 



310 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of property. Then has property rights supe- 
rior to the man, that it may endow a man 
possessing it with rights denied the man who 
has it not? 

Children, it is true, cannot claim the suf- 
frage under the Jeffersonian regime while 
children. Neither can they build and manage 
houses, rear other children, take husbands or 
wives, enter business, as a rule, or do a hun- 
dred other things which they do when grown. 
Nature brings them to their full rights with 
their full capabilities. But every child born 
into a nation of manhood sufifrage has an equal 
right with every other human being born 
therein. He comes to the suffrage at the same 
time in life. Nature regulates that just as it 
does seed-time and harvest. 

Kaisers and Emperors hold that one man is 
divinely commissioned to rule millions — show 
me the letters of authority from on high? No? 
Cannot? Are Kaiser and Czar men? Are 
they then if only men my equal? If born to 
rule over me, why? 

There is this difference to the ordinary mor- 
tal between the rule of the majority and the 
divine right of kings : Common consent of the 
governed, deliberately given, has made ma- 
jority rule the workable plan in democratic 
government. Majorities shift. Each man has 
a voice, though none a ruling voice. It has 
its sanction in applying the resultant of social 
opinion, will and aspirations to government. 
Neither majority nor king can have any sanc- 
tion for wronging any man. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 311 

Thomas B. Reed, late speaker of the House 
of Representatives, said: ''In the long run the 
average sense of the many is better for the 
many than the best sense of any one man." This 
is what Jeffersonians mean when they say that 
the voice of the people is the voice of God. 
To their superficial minds, it seems that so far 
as the Deity expresses himself in affairs of 
government, the voice of the people is the 
voice of God. In civilization advancing to- 
ward righteousness, it would seem to those 
less wise than Roosevelt that the will of the 
people must be in harmony with the will of 
God. Otherwise their trend would be down 
to destruction instead of upward to God ; 
otherwise they would be a dying nation, 
headed for the abyss. So far as we can read 
His -. cssage, God has so ordered it, that this 
exprLS'sion of the great aggregate intelligence 
and conscience of mankind is always finally 
more nearly right than that of any one man, 
however wise or good — even more nearly right 
than the will of a self-seeking, egotistical auto- 
crat, claiming to rule by divine right. 

The great human heart, though often tem- 
porarily deranged, finally beats true to the 
anthem of humanity for its all-permeating 
nerve strings are attuned to every impulse of 
the living mass. No palsied autocratic brain, 
insulated by the egoism of sycophantic lauda- 
tion can take up the refrain. The collective 
human intellect arrives at its proper goal 
through trials and mistakes, perhaps ; along 
by-ways, beckoned on by false prophets, past 



312 Roosevelt and the Republic 

reactionaries with face to the setting sun, the 
great world-intellect finally arrives — because 
it is so ordained, because Supreme Wisdom 
has so ordered it. And if any race is incapable 
of this accomplishment en masse, if it is not 
headed toward the right, no individual influ- 
ence will avail to turn the torrent, leading to 
the abyss, any more than the autumn leaf upon 
its bosom can turn the mighty current of the 
Mississippi. 

No man, however great he may regard him- 
self, would seem fit for one moment to a place 
of power in a democratic republic, who has not 
an abiding faith in the trend of this collective 
conscience. It was this faith which enabled 
Thomas Jefferson to save for American gen- 
erations to come the liberties won by the blood 
of the Revolution ; that enabled Andrew Jack- 
son to speed our free government on its way, 
and enabled Abraham Lincoln to preserve the 
heritage handed down to him. 

They were not wise historians; just demo- 
crats in high place. / 



Roosevelt and the Republic 313 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

RICH AND POOR IN POLITICS AS ROOSEVELT SEES 
THEM. 

During most of his political career, Presi- 
dent Roosevelt held the opinion that the rich 
man has been a power for good in politics. 
Envy, class-hatred, jealousy, are the motives 
ascribed to the poorer classes who complain of 
adverse political or industrial conditions. 

"We are certain to fail if we adopt the 
policy of the demagogue who raves against 
wealth, which is simply a form of combined 
thrift, foresight and intelligence ; who would 
shut the door of opportunity against those 
whose energy we should especially foster, by 
penalizing the qualities which make for suc- 
cess." (Addresses, 95.) 

"It Is inevitable in a period of business pros- 
perity that some men thrive more than others, 
and it is unfortunately also inevitable that 
when this is the case, some unwise people are 
sure to try to appeal to the envy and jealousy 
of those who succeed least." (Address, April, 
1902.) 

"The worst foe to the poor man is the labor 
leader, whether philanthropist or politician, 
who tries to teach him that he is the victim 



3t4 Roosevelt and the Republic 

of conspiracy and INJUSTICE." (American 
Ideals, 220.) 

'Trobably every man of power by that very 
fact is capable of doing damage to his neigh- 
bors, but we cannot afford to discourage the 
development of such men merely because it i^ 
possible they may use the power for wrong 
ends." (Addresses, 14.) 

"It is probable the greatest wrong done by 
vast wealth" (vast private fortune) *'is the 
harm that we of moderate means do ourselves 
when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter 
deep into our natures." (Addresses, 15.) 

Roosevelt says some men fail to use their in- 
tellects decently, just as other men fail to use 
their wealth, "but such fact warrants us no 
more in attacking wealth than in attacking 
intellect." 

"There is evil in these conditions, but you 
cannot destroy it unless you destroy the civil- 
ization they have brought about." 

"It is a base and infamous thing for a man 
of means to act in a spirit of arrogant, brutal 
disregard toward his fellow who has less 
means, and it is no less infamous and no less 
base to act in a spirit of envy, rancor and 
hatred against the man of greater means mere- 
ly because of his great means." (Address at 
Butte, Alay 27, 1903.) 

"The line of demarcation we draw must al- 
ways be on conduct, not on wealth." 

"The outcome was equally fatal whether the 
country fell into the hands of a wealthy oli- 
garchy which exploited the poor, or whether 



Roosevelt and the Republic 315 

it fell under the dominion of the turbulent mob 
that plundered the rich." (Address, Syracuse, 
Dec. 7, 1903.) 

"It is probably true that the large majority 
of fortunes that now exist in this country have 
been amassed, not by injuring our people, but 
as an incident to conferring a great benefit 
upon the community. There is but the scanti- 
est of justification for the outcry against men 
of v^^ealth as such, and it ought to be unnec- 
essary to state that any appeal vs^hich directly 
or indirectly leads to suspicion or hatred 
among ourselves . . . is an attack upon 
the fundamental properties of our citizenship. 
Our interests are at the bottom common. In 
the long run v^e go up or down together. Yet 
more and more it is evident that the state, and 
if necessary the nation, has to possess the right 
of supervision and control over the great cor- 
porations which are its creatures." (Address, 
Minneapolis, September, 1901.) 

"We wish to face the facts, declining to have 
our vision blinded either by the folly of those 
who say there are no evils, or the still more 
dangerous folly of those who see, or make be- 
lieve they see, nothing but evil in all the exist- 
ing system, and who, if given their way, would 
destroy the evil by the simple process of bring- 
ing ruin and disaster to the entire country." 
(Address, Cincinnati, September 20, 1903.) 

"A big corporation may be doing excellent 
work for the whole country, and you want, 
above all things, not to interfere with well- 
meaning corporations." (Addresses, 41.) 



3i6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"In dealing with business interests, for the 
government to undertake by crude and ill-ad- 
vised legislation to do what may turn out to 
be bad would be to incur the risk of such far- 
reaching disaster that it would be better to do 
nothing at all." (Message, December, 1901.) 

''Much of the legislation directed at trusts 
would have been exceedingly mischievous, had 
it not been entirely ineffective." (Message, 
December, 1901.) 

"There is a growing tendency to demand the 
illegitimate and unwise transfer to the govern- 
ment of much of the work that should be done 
by private persons singly or associated to- 
gether." (Chamber of Commerce, New York, 
November, 1902.) 

Panic, fear, envy, hatred, ignorance — "There 
can exist in the Republic no man more wicked, 
no man more dangerous to the people, than 
he who would arouse these feelings in the 
hope that they would redound to his political 
advantage." (Addresses, 64.) 

"If in a spirit of sullen envy they" (the com- 
mon people) "insist upon pulling down those 
who have profited most by years of fatness, 
they will bury themselves in a crash of com- 
mon disaster." (Address, Providence, August, 
1902.) 

"An assault upon what Benton calls the 
money power is apt to be popular in a demo- 
cratic republic, partly on account of the vague 
fear with which the poorer and more ignorant 
voters regard a powerful institution whose 
workings they do not understand, and partly 



Roosevelt and the Republic 317 

on account of the jealousy they feel toward 
those who are better ofif than themselves." 

These are but samples. They might be 
multiplied indefinitely. One dominant note 
rings through all of Roosevelt's statements 
upon this theme. "There is but the scantie<=;t 
justification for the outcry against men of 
wealth." "Corporations are more sinned 
against than sinning." 

Opposite is the tone of the minor key. Com- 
plaining poor are actuated mostly by jealousy, 
ignorance, envy, they have no cause for com- 
plaint. If it were not for the wealthy the poor, 
who are usually poor through incompetence, 
would be ten times worse ofif. 

The dominant note and minor chord were 
both in full evidence right up to the time that 
Roosevelt made his famous "muckrake" 
speech at the laying of the corner stone of the 
House of Representatives building about two 
years ago. That speech sounded the dominant 
note and the minor chord in higher keyh tlian 
ever before. True, there was the Delphic ut- 
terance, the ambiguous statement, the cun- 
ning qualification, the good Lord, good devil, 
preachment. "Wealthy as such." "Crude and 
ill-advised " legislation. "Well-meaning cor- 
porations," etc. But we must assume that 
Roosevelt really intended to say something. 

In a speech in New York City in February, 
1904, Elihu Root said of Roosevelt: He is 
"the greatest conservative force for the pro- 
tection of capital in the City of Washington in 
the years which have elapsed since President 



3i8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

McKinley's death. On more than one occasion 
he threatened extremists of his own party with 
the veto in protection of capital." 

Roosevelt in turn complimented most highly 
the services of Root. We all know where 
Elihu Root stands. We know his relations 
with William C. Whitney, Thomas F. Ryan, 
and the rest. We know him as the most power- 
ful and resourceful servant of "predatory 
wealth" that this country has ever known. We 
know, too, that Root knows Roosevelt and 
that his estimate of Roosevelt was correct. 

When Roosevelt made his "muckrake 
speech" there was no doubt at all but the 
people of America had been aroused to a dan- 
gerous frame of mind by the indubitable evi- 
dence of widespread and general iniquity, po- 
litical and industrial, on the part of wealthy 
men and powerful corporations. That had 
been made very plain by writers and state and 
city officers throughout the land. Such acts 
could no longer be apologized for. The man 
who would persist longer in denying them 
would find himself on the unpopular side — ■ 
without popular support. 

It was not necessary to change one's con- 
victions, but it was necessary to seem by one's 
acts to change, or to lose one's popularity. 
One might plunge in, fight his way to the 
front, and direct the hunt, he could not stop 
it. In the face of these conditions" we find a 
change coming over the spirit of Roosevelt's 
dreams. Muckraking, of course, was infam- 
ous, but there was a sort of high-minded criti- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 319 

cism by high-minded men which was most^ 
proper. Leave criticism to the President and 
you are sure of having the right sort. Other 
men cannot distinguish the genuine. I cannot 
tell its distinctive marks. The genuine is 
known by intuition, a sixth sense. The signa- 
ture of Theodore Roosevelt upon the package 
is your guarantee. 

Attacks, too, upon wealth and the wealthy, 
upon individuals and corporations, are most 
unholy, especially when made as the ordinary 
man makes them from motives of jealousy 
and envy. Leave the attacks to me. Nobody 
can question my motives. Presto and Roose- 
velt is at the head of the ''muckrake" squad 
manipulating the slime and applying deodor- 
izing agents, if not disinfectants. His plume 
waves in the van of the attacking column. It 
is his to choose the weapons and direct the 
manner of the attack. He is to choose the bat- 
tlefield. There are to be no other attacks, no 
other commanders. *-s»~ 

We are not of those who believe that Roose- 
velt wishes to do intentional wrong, least of 
all harm to his country. In but one emerg- 
ency will Roosevelt stoop to evil deeds — when 
his own interests are at stake. But Roosevelt 
has no sympathy with the toiling masses. He 
does not understand them. Ordinary farmers, 
laborers, or artisans, have nothing in common 
with Theodore Roosevelt. He has profound 
contempt for the "trader," the "bourgeoisie." 
Roosevelt has no comprehension of institu- 
tional wrong. It is all a mere matter of holy 



i^' 



320 Roosevelt and the Republic 

or unholy individual action. Neither can he 
realize that Theodore Roosevelt can possibly 
do an unrighteous or an unwise act. No act 
of Theodore Roosevelt can be unrighteous or 
unwise. \ 

Roosevelt has no idea of the fierce intensity 
of the feelings beneath the jeans of the farmer 
and the mechanic. To him the problems that 
give vitality to populism, equity societies and 
trades' unions are a sealed book. Tools of 
demagogues consumed by jealousy is the way 
he diagnosis the case. Envy to him is the 
meanest of sentiments. It is a sort of spon- 
taneous toadstool, growing out of the essential 
wickedness rank in human nature. 

Insane would he pronounce the man who 
saw in envy the thunder blackness of the toil- 
ing, human mass which lives and suffers si- 
lently. Who recognized it as the gathering 
cloud from which leaps the quick lightning of 
retribution, whose bolts fall upon the robbers 
and oppressors of toil. Clouds gathered in the 
murk of wrong; lightnings stirring the whole 
human mass into revolt against its oppressors. 
Not beautiful ; grim often ; sometimes terrible ; 
never mean. Symptoming a dull pain in the 
breasts of the inarticulate ones who feel rather 
than think. Of obscured mental vision, they 
cannot see except as a dread formless thing 
the cruel iron thrust into their souls, nor the 
force that makes the thrust. But they can feel 
the dull torturing pain. Symptomatic agony 
telegraphing to the brain the tragedy of the 
crushed limb; like the red signal of disaster 



Roosevelt and the Republic 321 

ahead, it means vital danger. Lurid and men- 
acing are envy's clouds and from them flash 
lightnings of outraged feeling. There are 
those who see in all this a warning to political 
mariners. Continue to disregard these black 
lowerings, these low mutterings, these sullen 
flashes ; interpret them as petty displays of 
shallow meanness ; under the pressure of ex- 
ploiting interest, steer the ship of state into 
their gathering storm — but beware the thun- 
derbolt ! 

For a time even the miserable rabble will 
bear the heel of the oppressor, but every bruise 
leaves a rankling pain. Finally it grows into 
agony quite unbearable. Then the dumb, suf- 
fering thing will rise in its inarticulate wrath 
and crush its tormentor. Believers in dem- 
ocracy would give them freedom, voice, man- 
hood. They would credit them with a heart 
like their own hearts, with souls like their own 
souls ; would let them see whose heel has 
bruised them ; help them to ward off the blow. 
Then they say, this sullen envy would burn 
itself to ashes. It would no longer have need 
of being. 

Roosevelt takes a different method. He 
would have wise and great "rulers" give them 
what they ought to have, not what they aspire 
for. He would direct the force into other 
channels. That explains his putting himself 
at the head of the discontented mass and try- 
ing to control it to the safe harbor of cen- 
tralization and bureaucracy. 

Whether there are serious real wrongs or 



322 Roosevelt and the Republic 

not Roosevelt knows that among the masses 
just now there is an overmastering sense of 
wrong. Opposed and challenged, it would be 
irresistible. Guided, it may be used as an ir- 
resistible instrument to attain ends dear to 
President Roosevelt. 

With supreme skill Roosevelt has put him- 
self in control of this voiceless discontent. It 
wants something, but knows not what. 
Roosevelt will tell it. The masses will 
hearken to his voice. Congress, the courts, 
newspapers who disagree with Roosevelt, are 
enemies of this mass, trying to shield its de- 
spoilers. Hence the mass will overbear Con- 
gress, courts, newspapers. A strong central 
government, power by the President over 
corporate and great individual wealth, this is 
the one thing wanted. A bureau will be con- 
structed, subject to the executive will, which 
will make everybody do right, will correct 
every abuse, solve every problem. Always 
will the executive be a beneficent autocrat; 
always will the bureau be his efficient instru- 
ment of holiness, j 

There are defects in the plan. Fine a mon- 
opolistic corporation and you fine its patrons. 
Imprison its officers and it has others ready 
to break the law, provided there is a motive 
for breaking it. You cannot drive carpet tacks 
with a pile-driver nor piles with a tack-ham- 
mer. Power adequate to deal with the great 
corporation is dangerous to the individual. 
Criminal courts will not do. The process can 
readily destroy democratic-republican govern- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 323 

ment. It can easily get every regulated cor- 
poration head-over-ears in politics, corrupting 
and destroying nation and state. But if one 
wants to solve the problem and save the Re- 
public it must be done by throwing the re- 
sponsibility back upon the people through 
state governments so as to build up a citizen- 
ship wise enough and strong enough to rec- 
ognize the evil and destroy it. 



324 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ROOSEVELT IN LITERATURE. 

Theodore Roosevelt entered literature even 
before he became a law-maker and practical 
politician. History was his favorite field. In 
history Roosevelt found greatest interest in 
chronicles of strife and bloodshed. For Roose- 
velt is atavistic. His imagination harks back 
to the battlefield and the chase. He loves the 
blood-thrill of the prognathic, hairy, forest 
man whose rude stone axe or strong blunt 
spear laid lifeless wolf and bear. The hot 
breath of the death struggle is new wine to his 
spirit. Triumph comes to him with the ebb 
of the red life-tide, the final sigh of dissolu- 
tion. School, college, parlor glossed over these 
traits. They were covered with an enamel of 
civilization. But when manhood came, the 
real Roosevelt shone through. 

Choosing first a war theme, he wrote of the 
*'Naval War of 1812." This was Roosevelt's 
initial literary efifort, and curiously enough, it 
is thus far his best, although given to the 
public in his twenty-fourth year. 

Later Roosevelt wrote more entertainingly. 
His style gained something in terseness and 
power of expression. But for scholarly re- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 325 

search and calm judgment, his first effort over- 
shadows all others. Literary fledgling as he 
then was, he recognized his own limitations. 
Roosevelt knew he was not an "authority" 
upon anything. He wanted to become an ''au- 
thority." The subject suited him. Roosevelt's 
judgment of military matters is superior to his 
judgment in any other field. His faults were 
kept in the background, mere embryotic man- 
nerisms, later to become so obtrusive, That 
all-pervading ego denied itself. The dogma- 
tism and intellectual arrogance of the later 
man appeared only in glimpses here and there. 

There was promise in the work, albeit it 
was rambling and incoherent in plan. All the 
facts were there, laboriously assembled if not 
thoroughly digested. It showed industry and 
some historical discrimination. 

Roosevelt has a mania for winning a reputa- 
tion for judicial fairness, yet from the first he 
distrusted his own impartiality. Almost from 
the first he fell into the trick of showing dis- 
interestedness by abusing or condemning both 
sides with apparent impartiality. British 
naval historians, no doubt very justly, came in 
for a share of his flagellation. Mr. James was 
too clever an author not to know ; therefore 
Roosevelt stamped him with the badge of 
Ananias, which later was to become so popu- 
lar among Roosevelt's friends. There was 
danger of this James condemnation giving the 
young historian a reputation for American 
bias. Therefore our wise young man said 
James was not a whit more blameworthy than 



^26 Roosevelt and the Republic 

his American co-liars. His own inaccuracies 
and misstatements, of which there were many, 
were to be checked up later. 
. As the fledgling grew older his literary- 
flight grew more deft and more erratic, but 
never stronger. There is a world of enlighten- 
ment in his books as to the real Roosevelt. 
The very subjects reflect the man. His auto- 
biography thunders in every line. His bump- 
tious individuality is written profusely on 
every page. Such sublime subjectiveness is 
rare, even in ego-obsessed mortals. 

Before becoming civil service commissioner 
he wrote his lives of Thomas H. Benton and 
Gouverneur Morris, as well as two of his 
essays on politics. All were written after 
Roosevelt had almost reached thirty years. 
Immaturity could have marred only the naval 
history, and this is of Roosevelt's books the 
most mature. Following close, in the civil 
service commissioner period, come his "Ranch 
Life and Hunting Trail," "Historv of New 
York," "Winning of the West," "Essays on 
Practical Politics," "Wilderness Hunter." 
Only a little later came "American Political 
Ideals, "Oliver Cromwell," "The Strenuous 
Life." Then the deluge of state papers, mes- 
sages, etc. 

Without a knowledge of his writings, one 
does not know Roosevelt nor appreciate his 
public acts. In his books the Roosevelt sea is 
sounded and charted. The longitude and lati- 
tude of every rock and shoal is set down. With 
these enlightening documents before one, one 



Roosevelt and the Republic 327 

might prick out Roosevelt^s course to a nicety 
on the chart. His navigation code for the ship 
of state is there set down. We can see 
whither he would steer her. 

"Winning of the West," like the Lives of 
Benton and Morris, has much of the Roosevelt 
political doctrine displayed. He writes himself 
down in all three as a Hamiltonian, an aristo- 
crat, a doubter of democracy, a partisan of 
war, an advocate of conquest, a believer in 
great military power, physical size and expan- 
sion as elements of national greatness. Prob- 
ably the most difficult of his books is his 
"Winning of the West." Throughout its 
pages is a dreary monotonous repetition of vio- 
lent deeds, strung together in loose and chaotic 
order. It is more like the notes for a book 
than a book itself. But the style of the writ- 
ing is attractive, and the stories not bad if one 
enjoys the recounting of violent deeds. 

Critics say that most authors exhaust them- 
selves in a single volume. It is emphatically 
true of Roosevelt. Each volume of his, so far 
as it contains abstract ideas, is a repetition of 
every other in scarcely different form. The 
faces of his thoughts become as familiar as old 
friends. 

Roosevelt's state papers have become most 
bulky. He has a mania for messages to the 
legislative branch, which are really appeals to 
the country. Each delivery is longer than the 
last. His annual messages to Congress have 
become annual cyclopedias of universal knowl- 
edge. Instead of sharp, clear recommenda- 



32B Roosevelt and the Republic 

tions as to governmental needs and govern- 
mental policies, they are series of essays upon 
history, politics, science, theology, sociology, 
political economy and government, put for- 
w^ard in a spirit of aggressive boastfulness and 
self-glorification. Here and there, too, is inter- 
spersed a sermon. These state papers, like all 
of the v^riting of Roosevelt since he became a 
public figure, are colored throughout with the 
necessity of defending his own course in this 
and that situation. 

Except in matters of denunciation, plain 
statement is lacking. Coming from a less dis- 
tinguished citizen, the matter would be char- 
acterized as platitudinous or Delphic : good 
Lord, good devil, preachments ; bolstered up 
by vociferous fulminations. But in great men 
such statements are things of supernal wisdom. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 329 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ROOSEVELT, WAR AND PEACE. 

No president in the history of the country- 
has SO assiduously cultivated the war spirit as 
Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt does not look 
upon war as a necessary evil, but a thing to 
be desired for itself as a promoter of human 
virtue. The militant dominating man with 
blood lust is to him the only true man. 

"We must not forget that an ignoble peace 
is w^orse than any war," said Roosevelt. Peace 
must be "righteous" to justify itself. If "ig- 
noble" it is worse than an ignoble war. 

That was why Theodore Roosevelt wanted 
war with Spain and boasted of having helped 
to bring it about. For that reason the silent 
service of the Naval bureau did not satisfy 
him. He wanted the gory field because : "I 
wanted to count for one in the fight for order 
and for the republic ; if the crisis should come, 
I wanted to take a man's stand, that was why." 

Successfully to carry on the trade of war, 
we must have a great army of regular soldiers 
and a big navy: 

"An efficient navy of adequate size is not 
only the best guarantee of peace, but it is al- 
ways the surest means of seeing that if war 



330 Roosevelt and the Republic 

does come, the result will be honorable to our 
^ood name and favorable to our national in- 
terests." 

''Remember, the Monroe doctrine will be re- 
spected as long as wq have an efficient navy 
and not much longer." (Speech at Proctor, 

The Monroe doctrine was enunciated De- 
cember, 1823. It has been respected since that 
time. The United States has had a strong navy 
at the time of the Civil War only. It had 
scarcely any navy when Cleveland gave his 
famous ultimatum to England. But let that 
pass. 

Believing in a strong military establish- 
ment, Roosevelt wants regular troops. He has 
no patience with militia. They cannot bring 
''honor to the country on foreign fields." 

"They" (colonists of revolutionary times) 
"had the same illogical fear of the executive 
that demagogues to-day profess to have of a 
standing army." 

"In accordance with their curiously foolish 
theories, the democrats persisted in relying 
upon the weakest of all reeds, the militia, who 
promptly ran away every time they faced a 
foe in the open. This applied to all, whether 
Eastern or Western or Southern ; the men of 
the Eastern states in 1812-13 did as badly as, 
and no worse than, the Virginians in 1814. In- 
deed, one of the good results of the war was 
that it did away forever with all reliance on 
the old-time militia, the most expensive and 
inefficient species of soldiers that could be in-« 



Roosevelt and the Republic 331 

vented." (Roosevelt's Life of Morris, page 

349.) 

Here is some history w^ith w^hich Roosevelt 
supports his theory: 

*'On the Niagara frontier an honest and esti- 
mable old gentleman and v^orthy citizen, who 
knew nothing about military matters, General 
Van Rensselaer, tried to cross over and at- 
tack the British at Oueenstown." (Roosevelt's 
Naval War of 1812, page 13.) 

This *'old gentleman" was at that time 
thirty-eight years of age, having entered mili- 
tary life at eighteen, and having seen much 
hard fighting in which he was twice severely 
wounded. 

"The small British army marched at will 
through Virginia and Maryland, burned 
Washington, and finally retreated from before 
Baltimore and embarked to take part in the 
expedition before New Orleans. Twice, at 
Bladensburg and North Point, it came in con- 
tact with superior numbers of militia in fairly 
good position. In each case the result was the 
same. After some preliminary skirmishing, 
maneuvering and volley-firing the British 
charged with bayonets. The rawest regiments 
among the militia then broke at once. Others 
kept pretty steady, pouring in a destructive 
fire until the regulars came close up to them, 
when they also fled. ... At North Point, 
however, the militia — being more experienced 
— behaved better than at Bladensburg." 
(Naval War of 1812, preface.) 

At Bladensburg five thousand British mil- 



332 Roosevelt and the Republic 

itia, utterly worn out by the heat, frightened 
into panic double their number of American 
militia, well posted." (Naval War.) 

Lossing's encyclopedia has General Winder 
with seven thousand American militia, only 
nine hundred of whom were enlisted men, giv- 
ing stubborn battle to five thousand or more 
British regulars. The Americans fled from 
their position finally. While they lost twenty- 
six killed and fifty wounded, the British lost 
five hundred men. 

At North Point two thousand three hundred 
American militiamen, battling with General 
Ross and five thousand British regulars, beat 
them off with a loss to the British of their 
general and two hundred and ninety men. 

Roosevelt has Lundy's Lane a battle be- 
tween nearly equal forces of Americans and 
British, in which the British were victorious. 
Other historians have the Americans outnum- 
bered nearly two to one and the British loss 
the greater. 

Plattsburg furnishes an instance where a 
very inferior force of militia defeated an army 
of regulars with great slaughter. New Or- 
leans was a striking instance of the superiority 
of militia fighting. Roosevelt knew of both. 
Yet he wrote : 

"I originally intended to write a companion 
volume to this which should deal with the 
operations on land. But a short examination 
showed that these operations were hardly 
worth serious study. . . . British regulars, 
trained in many wars, thrashed the raw re- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 333 

crults opposed to them wherever they had any- 
thing like a fair chance. It is not cheerful 
reading for an American nor yet of interest 
to the military student." (Naval War of 
1812, page 22.) 

Roosevelt was fully conversant with Bunker 
Hill, King's Mountain, New^ Orleans, and a 
dozen smaller engagements of like result when 
he made such an extraordinary statement as 
the above. 

Non-military persons hardly understand 
Roosevelt's distinction between militia and the 
volunteer soldiers who fought the Civil War. 
Both are citizen soldiers of exactly the same 
class. It takes experience to develop high ef- 
ficiencv in either. Every American war has 
been fought by citizen soldiers. None has 
been lost. No nation can show a history of 
more gallant fighting. If the cause is good, 
no fault can be found with citizen soldiery. 

Militia or other citizen soldiery, however, do 
not readily become human engines of murder. 
They are still men in sympathy with the rank 
and file of their countrymen. Such men can- 
not be relied upon by a hero on horseback to 
obey like automatons any order which he may 
give, even to turning their guns upon their 
own brothers. They have not been brought 
under the control of military hypnotism. They 
cannot be made Hessians or Cossacks. Citi- 
zen soldiers will not destroy their country's 
liberties. They cannot be relied upon to de- 
troy the liberties of other peoples. Your true 



334 Roosevelt and the Republic 

imperialist loves not the militia, or the citizen 
soldier. 

Curiously enough, Theodore Roosevelt and 
his Rough Riders, who were irregular soldiers, 
did most all of the fighting before Santiago, 
according to Roosevelt's account. Switzer- 
land, the strongest military power in the 
world for its population, in defensive warfare, 
relies entirely upon citizen soldiery. 

Aside from the development of mechanical 
accessories, which goes on outside of, as well 
as within the army, the profession of fighting 
is easily learned. Six months in the field 
makes a veteran. Each great war trains its 
own fighting men. There is no other way. 

Americans who love liberty will no more 
give over their protection of their fundamental 
rights to a hireling soldiery than they will sur- 
render their salvation into the hands of a 
priestly class or their government to a govern- 
ing caste. Each man in the last analysis must 
defend himself and his own, just as he must 
look after his government or the salvation of 
his soul. 

But those who look forward to imperialism 
must place their trust in regular soldiers. 
'Tt is the great expanding peoples which be- 
queath to future ages the great memories and 
material results of their achievement." . . . 
With this ideal Roosevelt realizes that trained 
legions must be provided. The citizen will not 
leave home to drown in blood the liberties of 
other peoples. 

"The troops and police were thoroughly^ 



Roosevelt and the Republic 335 

armed and attacked the rioters with a whole- 
some desire to do them harm. . . . Two 
millions of property had been destroyed and 
many valuable lives lost, but over 1,200 rioters 
were slain, an admirable object lesson to the 
remainder." 

"So-called upper classes developed along the 
lines of a wealthy and timid bourgeoisie type, 
measuring everything by a mercantile stand- 
ard (a peculiarly debasing one if taken wholly 
by itself), and submitting to be ruled in local 
affairs by low, foreign mobs, and in national 
matters by their arrogant southern kinsmen. 
The military spirit of these last certainly stood 
them in good stead in the Civil War. The 
world has never seen better soldiers than those 
who followed Lee ; and their leader will un- 
doubtedly rank as without any exception the 
very greatest of the great captains that the 
English-speaking peoples have brought forth, 
and this, although the last and chief of his 
antagonists, may himself claim to stand as the 
full equal of Marlboro and Wellington." (Life 
of Benton, page 38.) 

Roosevelt shows clever judgment of soldier- 
ly merit. But the fact remains that the South- 
ern chivalry was overborne, and Lee's great 
military genius was without avail. "Poor 
whites" made up the bulk of Lee's fighting 
men. Frequently Roosevelt speaks of nations 
of great breeders and great fighters being the 
ruling nations of the earth. 

To those who have followed current events 
it is unnecessary to multiply quotations indi- 



336 . Roosevelt and the Republic 

eating that war spirit is a dominant note in 
the character of Theodore Roosevelt. His first 
book treated of war. War narrative makes up 
a large part of all his other books. He fought 
as eagerly as he had studied and written of 
war. His policy as President has been punctu- 
ated with military display. All the dramatic 
arts of the most dramatic of presidents have 
been exercised to arouse in the nation a spirit 
of war. 

Military appropriations in a few years have 
increased fourfold. Exclusive of pensions, the 
war budget approximates $200,000,000 a year, 
more than the whole cost of government be- 
fore the Civil War. Each inhabitant now 
bears a military burden one-sixth greater than 
all government burdens at the time of Van 
Buren. 

Programmes of navy-building the largest in 
the history of the nation are going forward. 
Historical celebrations are made military and 
naval pageants. This country is now witness- 
ing a naval pageant such as the world has 
seldom seen, costing more than can be earned 
in a year by the agricultural workers of such 
a state as Nebraska. Already we have sunk 
close to a billion dollars in a new navy, and it 
is a question whether it would mean strength 
and security or weakness and disgrace if war 
were now to come. This great, costly, naval 
pageant has been planned especially to stimu- 
late the people to the expenditure of other hun- 
dreds of millions in fighting ships. Armor 
plate men are reaping a golden harvest, selling 



Roosevelt and the Republic 33;^ 

armor to the government at ten times its cost, 
turning the sweat and blood of our productive 
workers into profits for over-rich steel monop- 
olists. 

Yet no great continental power in history- 
has been saved from defeat in any war by the 
prowess of its navy, nor has the prowess of 
its navy given it victory. Certainly in a vital 
military contest no foreign nation could de- 
stroy us with its navy. Yet we are hanging 
more ships like millstones around the nation's 
neck. 

Sufficient money has been spent in those use- 
less ships which, please the Lord, will go to 
the junk pile before they fire a hostile shot, to 
gridiron the country north and south, east and 
west, with trunk railway lines, and cover the 
important seas with government mail and 
commercial steamships. Governments may 
claim the power to kill, never to engage in the 
transportation business. The money sunk in 
our fleet would have reclaimed the desert 
places in our land, planted trees on the barren 
rocky slopes. But that would be making 
homes for the happiness of man, not preparing 
to destroy him. We must necessarily sacrifice 
our hundreds of millions to the Moloch of 
war while the nation dances before him in 
paleolithic devil worship. 

Commercialism, President Roosevelt finds, 
as we have seen, the alternative of war. As 
history tells the story war and commercialism 
in its most sinister sense go hand in hand. 
Greatest war nations have finally sunk under 



338 Roosevelt and the Republic 

plutocracy's load. In our country the fighting 
spirit goes hand in hand with the spirit of 
lawless wealth. The most primitive, violent 
and militant communities have the lowest civic 
spirit, the most offensively cruel displays of 
greed and business unrighteousness. Com- 
mercialism is the handmaiden of war. Follow- 
ing every great contest of blood and iron since 
the world began, there has been a loosening of 
moral restraint. Men have committed deeds 
that they would not think of committing be- 
fore. Speculation,, cruel exploitation, extrava- 
gance, harlotry, corruption, have stalked bold- 
ly in the track of every army since the world 
began. 

The "golden age" of commercialism coin- 
cides with the age of maximum military 
strength. Predatory instincts of the commer- 
cialized man find their counterparts in the 
savagery of military impulse. The rough 
border where adventurous men fight their way 
becomes soon the best soil for business greed 
and political corruption. 

And why not? War is the rolling back of 
the scroll of civilization to the day of the can- 
nibal forebear, who, with knashing teeth, fell 
upon his fellow, butchered and devoured him 
and carried away his female to slavery. Says 
Gen. W. T. Sherman : 

"When I had my headquarters in a house it 
began to burn before I fairly got out of it. 
The truth is, human nature is human nature. 
You take the best lot of young men, all church 
members, if you please, and put them into an 



Roosevelt and the Republic 339 

army and let them invade the enemy's coun- 
try and Hve on it for any length of time, and 
they will gradually lose all self-restraint to a 
degree beyond the control of discipline. It 
always has been and always will be so." 

Carl Schurz quotes Sherman and adds: 

"The sayings of such a man as General 
Sherman upon the effects of war upon the 
morals of soldiers themselves may be com- 
mended to the sober contemplation of those 
who so glibly speak of war as a great moral 
agency — how war kindles in the popular breast 
the noblest instincts and emotions of human 
nature ; how it lifts a people above the mean 
selfishness of everyday life ; how it stops the 
growth of groveling materialism which is too 
apt to develop into a dominant tendency in a 
long period of peace ; how it turns the am- 
bitions of men into the channels of generous 
enthusiasm and lofty aspirations ; how it is 
such a fire bath from which human society 
emerges, cleaned of its dross, of low propensi- 
ties, refined in its best energies and more 
earnest than ever in devoted pursuit of its 
higher ideals." 

But such men as Sherman and Schurz can- 
not be supposed to know war as Roosevelt 
knows it. 

As if to emphasize his war tendencies, 
Roosevelt attacks peace advocates: 

"A class of professional non-combatants is 
as hurtful to the real healthy growth of a na- 
tion as a class of fire-eaters, for a weakness or 
folly nationally is as bad as a vice, or worse, 



340 Roosevelt and the Republic 

and in the long run a Quaker may be quite as 
undesirable a citizen as a duelist. No man 
not willing to bear arms and to fight for his 
rights can give a good reason why he should 
be entitled to the privilege of living in a free 
community." (Life of Benton, page 37.) 

"It is a bitter and unanswerable commentary 
on the workings of a non-resistant creed when 
reduced to practice, that such outrages and 
massacres as these committed on these help- 
less Indians, were more numerous and flagrant 
in the colony the Quakers governed than in 
any others ; the vaunted policy of peace which 
forbade them to play a true man's part, and 
put down wrong-doing, caused the utmost pos- 
sible evil to fall on white men and red. An 
avowed policy of force and fraud carried out 
in the most cynical manner could hardly have 
worked more terrible injustice. Their system 
was a direct incentive to crime and wrong- 
doing between the races. . . . No other 
colony made such futile, contemptible efforts 
to deal with the Indians ; no other colony 
showed such supine selfishness." (i, Winning 
of the West, 98.) 

It is a shame that some Roman fighting man 
with real red blood did not rewrite the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, so that the infamous creed 
of non-resistance, of peace on earth, good will 
to men, could not have reached the world and 
caused such mischief as Roosevelt here por- 
trays. Strange it is that the Preacher of this 
very creed should be worshipped as divine by 
all the nations of the west and that even 



Roosevelt and the Republic 341 

Roosevelt should preach and pray in a temple 
devoted to His worship. Strange it is that 
this creed should grow in strenisfth and spread 
over the earth for two thousand years as .1 
dominant civilizing force, while the men ready 
to "play a man's part," the legions of imperial 
Rome are but unsubstantial shades. Rome's 
hosts have vanished like guilty shadows from 
Britain, and Spain, and Gaul, from the land 
of the Goth, the Frank, the Jew, the Moor. 
Her valiant short sword, her thews and sinews 
hardened as steel by lanista and arena have 
passed like the snowflake before the breath 
of spring. But the soft unmanly ideal of this 
One of the non-resistant creed, has spread in 
conquering power over afl these lands, claim- 
ing them as its own. O arise, ye shades of 
fighting, dominating, expanding Rome, and tell 
us in your shame, how such a weakling with 
such an unmanly creed could conquer you all. 
Tell us why your Coliseum has crumbled in 
spite of your strength ; why your walls are 
overgrown, your palaces in ruin, your scholars, 
your heroes, your fighting men, are almost 
forgotten, crowded out of men's memories by 
the soft words of this weakling creed ! 

Come forth ye hairy ape like forms of paleo- 
lithic times and tell us how your fierce 
strength, your readiness to "play a true man's 
part" has not saved you from extinction ! 

''Sprawling, huge and hairy on the blood- 
smeared reeking stones 



342 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"Onkh, the paleolithic man, was gnawing a 

foeman's bones, 
"Snarling thus to the strangers — his mind in a 

righteous maze : 
" 'Ouff, ye smoothers of axes ! I bide by the 

good old ways.' 
"What, not eat my captives? Kill them and 

let them lie? 
"And waste the good meat I fought for! Ye 

weakling fools! Not I. 
"Besides, did not great Ingu, the Doer-of- 

Deeds-in-the-Air, 
"Show me their trail in the forest and guide 

my feet to the lair? 
"He made me fiercer than they were ; he 

sharpened my flint for the kill ; 
"And if I flay them and eat them, am I not 

doing his will? 
"Ouflf! Ye would scorn high Ingu? What 

folly is this ye speak ! 
"As long as the belly knows hunger, the strong 

man will eat the weak." 
"And loud snarled Onkh at his feasting on the 

blood-red reeking stones, 
"Lusty and huge and hairy, gnawing a foe- 
man's bones." 

******** 

"Gone are these tear-stained ages of ceaseless, 
merciless strife ; 

"Slow wakes the world from the night of blood 
to the dawn of love and life ; 

"But still some sodden sleeper from the prom- 
ised morning turns; 



Roosevelt and the Republic 343 

"Some fiend-bewildered, foolish heart for the 

ghastly vision yearns. 
"And lips that beg for His mercy, by martyr 

pangs that He bore, 
"Yet plead the will of the Prince of Peace for 

the hell that men call war. 
"Oh, thou divine Compassion — whose mercies 

never cease — 
"Spirit, however men name Thee, of Goodness 

and Love and Peace — 
"Through slow unwearied eons, Thy tender 

unwearied art 
"Has loosed the ape from Thy creature's form 

and the tiger from his heart. 
" 'Tis only Thy measureless Tenderness can 

pardon that bloody dream. 
"May the pity that led us from beasthood and 

set our face to the light 
"Still bide till the love of our brother man 

shall teach us Thy will aright !" 
(George Meason Whittier in the Independent.) 



344 ROOSEVELI' AND THE REPUBLIC 



CHAPTER XXX. 

WHAT ROOSEVELT HAS DONE FOR WASHINGTON 
SOCIETY. 

Society writers tell us that individualism 
characterizes the present regime in the 
White House. Mrs. Roosevelt, young Archi- 
bald, and little Quentin contribute to this 
happy attribute. 

Washington social ethics are pronounced 
unique. In fuss and feathers the White House 
cannot compare with the European court. But 
its social life is tremendously important. 
Through it a grave responsibility rests upon 
the mistress of the mansion. She must be a 
woman of rare dignity and tact. 

Some of the Rooseveltian innovations have 
stirred social Washington to its depths. The 
abolition of the Saturday afternoon receptions 
to the common people, otherwise the ''hoi 
polloi," or the "unwashed mob," aroused re- 
bellious criticism. It was the one and only 
time when any person of sound mind could 
pay homage to Mrs. President and go home 
sublimely happy or critically severe. This was 
woman's day at the White House. Mrs. 
Cleveland, Mrs. Harrison and, even the inva- 
lid, Mrs. McKinley, followed the precedent. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 345 

It had become the unwritten but still the bind- 
ing social law of all Washington. Mrs. Roose- 
velt, as her worthy lord would have done, 
smashed the precedent. Social touch with "un- 
washed mobs" was not for her. Her subjects 
were pleasanter companions outside the White 
House fence, where they, had the cat's priv- 
ileg-e of looking at the king — and queen, too. 

There have been other changes. Casual and 
undistinguished guests go around the back 
way when they visit the show rooms of the 
White House. "Ye olden times," when every- 
body except the butcher and the baker entered 
at the main entrance, are forgotten as a dream 
of social indiscriminateness. Mr. President 
and his family were given more privacy. They 
put themselves in position better to choose 
their own social set. Yet there is much criti- 
cism of this much-needed change. 

The exclusion of the general public from the 
main building has enabled the Roosevelts to 
enjoy a great measure of privacy. Police clear 
the driveways when the presidential carriage 
approaches. "The King! the King!" No, it is 
not announced in this way. Bated breathing 
on the part of the officers, grave abjurations in 
low tones of persons unhappilv on the walks, 
solemn warnings and shaking of heads, an- 
nounce the comings and goings of the great. 

Where and when the presidential family is 
going is kept a profound secret. Mrs. Roose- 
velt rides frequently with the President. They 
drive to the suburbs of the city, where an at- 
tendant has their magnificent saddle horses 



346 Roosevelt and the Republic 

awaiting them. They are off, secret service 
men on bicycles following in their wake. A 
merry chase these wheelmen have, for the 
President rides like mad and Mrs. Roosevelt 
sees to it that she is not left behind. Women 
of the diplomatic set take up the fad, and are 
seen in National Park in great numbers on 
pleasant afternoons. 

Roosevelt's family for many generations was 
identified with McAllister's New York *'Four 
Hundred." With Roosevelt in the President's 
chair, the "Four Hundred" came to Washing- 
ton and the Capital assumed a gayety and pro- 
priety unknown to it before. One after an- 
other, members of the wealthy, leisure class 
are coming to Washington to build their win- 
ter homes and enjoy or ornament its high so- 
ciety. Ground is being sold at fancy prices 
and mansions worth hundreds of thousands, 
or even millions, are being constructed. The 
courtly set of Washington have again come to 
their own. Inherited wealth and leisure hold 
sway. 

The trend of travel has been westward and 
northwestward to historic old Georgetown and 
the Rock Creek district. Sheridan circle will 
be famous for millionaires' homes long after 
once exclusive Dupont circle has been known 
as the transfer spot from Georgetown to 
Washington Heights. 

Mrs. Sheridan, the widow of "Little Phil," 
was the pioneer in this locality. Now she is 
scheduled to have for neighbors the George 
W. Vanderbilts, Harry Lehrs, Frank O. Low- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 347 

dens, Mrs. George M. Pullman, Mrs. Marshall 
Field, Airs. Hennen Jennings, diamond king of 
South Africa: Frederick H. Keep, lumber 
rich ; Mme. Hauge, Mrs. Albert Barney, and 
Representative Edgar Ellis of Kansas City. 

John Hays Hammond, of New Jersey and 
South Africa, has begun the construction of d 
*'palazzo" v^ith spacious grounds, to eclipse 
everything in that line of which Washington 
can boast. 

Mrs. Perry Belmont enthusiastically ap- 
proves Washington society. Hers is to be a 
million-dollar French chateau in the heart of 
the residential district. Thomas Nelson Page, 
the Huidekopers, Mrs. Sampson, widow of the 
late rear admiral ; Dr. Duncan McKim and the 
Glovers are to be neighbors. All these pleth- 
oric millions and these oceans of elegant 
leisure are giving Washington society a dif- 
ferent atmosphere. The Roosevelts gave the 
initial impulse. 

What Washington society has lost in its 
stately simplicity, it is said to have gained in 
brilliancy — the brilliant display of millions. 
But a few years ago but two ambassadors 
(personal representatives of rulers) graced the 
diplomatic corps — the British and the French. 
Now there are nine, with prospects of more. 
This gives a "brilliancy" (gold lace brilHancy) 
to the social event in official life never dreamed 
of under Madison, Lincoln, or Cleveland. Up 
to Roosevelt's administration it was possible 
for the humblest citizen, his wife and daugh- 
ter, to shake the hand of the chief executive 



348 Roosevelt and the Republic 

and be presented to his wife, now it is im- 
possible unless the meeting is arranged by an 
influential official or a personal friend of the 
President. 

"Social secretaries" have become a necessity 
for persons who would shine in Washington 
society. Relatives had attended to that for 
Mrs. Grant, Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Cleveland, Mrs. 
Harrison and Mrs. McKinley. Mrs. Cleve- 
land, a charming bride in the White House, 
attracted much social attention. 

Although her husband was no stranger to 
Washington, Mrs. Roosevelt came to the 
White House with but slight knowledge of 
Washington official society. While her hus- 
band had been climbing she was rearing a 
large family. First a clerk from the War De- 
partment was detailed. Then Congress em- 
ployed for her a ''social secretary." A dash- 
ing and self-reliant young woman now ar- 
ranges the details of Mrs. Roosevelt's social 
activities. Boldness of spirit, tact, sophistica- 
tion, are the desired attributes of this social 
chamberlain. Socially, Washington is gov- 
erned by social secretaries, just as Europe is 
governed by prime ministers. 

Mrs. Roosevelt has encouraged a greater 
variety of entertainments at the White House. 
They have a different flavor from those of the 
years gone by. Gold lace is more in evidence, 
and medals, and epaulets. Brilliant young 
subalterns, fresh from West Point or Annap- 
olis, are more sought after than g^rave sena- 
tors who have done life service for their coun- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 349 

try. There is a strong military flavor to every 
gathering. 

Afternoon and evening musicales have been 
made a feature at the White House. Eminent 
and showy men and women, birds of brain, or 
of guady plumage, listen. Garden parties are 
given in the historic grounds south of the ex- 
ecutive mansion — at least one such brilliant 
gathering each summer. Following the prece- 
dent of Mrs. James Robert McKee, daughter 
of Benjamin Harrison, Mrs. Roosevelt has en- 
tertained the young friends of Miss Alice 
Roosevelt, now Mrs. Longworth, with dances 
in the East Room of the White House. Her 
own daughter, Miss Ethel, will next season be 
a social belle with still younger, if not more, 
brilliant friends. Thus far, informal little din- 
ners have been the events in honor of Miss 
Ethel, after which the young girls and boys 
dance away the hours in the room which 
looked so impossible in the early days to Abi- 
gail Adams that it became useful for drying 
clothes in the winter season. 

Mrs. Roosevelt has made her social duties 
less exacting than those of her immediate pre- 
decessors. The social secretary serves as a 
barrier against the miscellaneous throng. Mrs. 
Roosevelt has shrunk into a charmed circle of 
highest official people and social favorites, a 
select elite among elite. Cabinet and legisla- 
tive circles have followed her in making their 
weekly receptions more exclusive. Before 
they had learned propriety from her the host- 



350 Roosevelt and the Repuslic 

ess of each particular circle had large public 
levees on certain days of the week, when any- 
one and everyone was received, the hostess 
having a group of attractive and prominent 
women to assist. A heavily-loaded table in the 
dining room was done full justice to by hosts 
of callers. It was costly, but considered an 
excellent way of keeping in touch with a great 
man's constituents. 

The Roosevelts have changed all this. A 
few days **at home" are announced in the 
newspapers, but the viands and their hot cheer 
are totally lacking. Sometimes there is a 
dainty tea table. The circle of callers is 
smaller and more select. 

Cabinet women wished to retain their tea 
tables, but this was vigorously opposed by 
Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Root, who took her 
part. Mrs. Leslie M. Shaw refused to be dic- 
tated to. Other wives of cabinet members 
gracefully submitted. 

President Roosevelt abolished the evening 
reception to the general public, given since the 
earliest history of the White House by the 
President and his wife. This public reception 
had always closed the series of evening levees. 
There was a storm, but the Roosevelts de- 
clined to meet the public indiscriminately. 
Invitation lists for the four large evening func- 
tions have been curtailed these last five years. 
In consequence there is greater comfort for 
those fortunate enough to be bidden. Only on 
New Year's day has the general public an op- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 351 

portunity to get a peep at the President and 
JiivS cabinet. After their betters have been re- 
ceived, the President remains in the blue room 
and receives a certain number of men and 
w^omen not expected. By the time the plain 
people have reached the blue room, Mrs. 
Roosevelt and the w^omen of the cabinet have 
escaped up stairs. Ordinary people can get 
their comfort from Mrs. Roosevelt's photo- 
graph. 

In the White House, Roosevelt lives on a 
scale more magnificent than most presidents. 
He has an extraordinarily good stable. All 
sorts of entertainment are open to him. Roose- 
velt has a contingent travelling fund of $25,- 
000. Before the railway agitation became 
acute, and irresponsible critics called attention 
to the fact, Roosevelt travelled on special 
trains and fared sumptuously at the expense of 
the railways. Anti-pass legislation made this 
look queer and it was discontinued. 

Uncle Sam's treasury provides lavishly for 
the servants, fittings, furnishings, and inci- 
dentals of the White House. Unsophisticated 
persons wonder how the President can live in 
splendor on even $50,000. He does not. His 
expenses are more nearly $200,000 a year — or 
at least the presidential menage costs the gov- 
ernment that amount includine the President's 
salary. President Roosevelt has greatly in- 
creased these expenses. During both terms he 
has disbursed for personal and White House 
matters something like $2,000,000 in govern- 
ment money. 



352 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Social caste has been accentuated in the 
White House. Not since Washington has the 
presidential office, on its social side, resembled 
so strongly the kingly court. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 353 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

A BIT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

Roosevelt when a member of the legislature 
of New York, about the end of his last session 
of service, gave a sketch of himself. Here are 
the things he thought worth mentioning: 

"I was born in New York October 27, 1858; 
my father of old Dutch Knickerbocker stock ; 
my mother was a Georgian, descended from 
the revolutionary Governor Bullock. I gradu- 
ated at Harvard in 1880 ; in college I did fairly 
in my studies, taking honors in natural his- 
tory and political economy;* and was very 
fond of sparring, being champion light weight 
at one time.t Have published sundry papers 
on ornithology, either on my trips to the north 
woods or around my summer home on the 
wooded broken slope of northern Long Island. 
I published also a 'History of the Naval War 
of 1812,' with an account of the Battle of New 
Orleans, which is a textbook in several col- 
leges, and has gone through three editions. I 
married Miss Alice Lee of Boston on leaving 

*C. Guild, Jr., in Harvard Grad. Magazine, 
10-177. 

tC. Guild, Jr. Same. 



354 Roosevelt and the Republic 

college in 1880. My wife and mother died in 
February, 1884. I have a little daughter living. 

*'I am very fond of both horse and rifle, and 
spend my summers either on the great plains 
after buffalo and antelope, or in the northern 
w^oods after deer and caribou. Am connected 
w^itli several charitable organizations, such as 
the Children's Aid Society, Orthopoedic Hos- 
pital, National Prison Association, and others, 
in which my father took a leading part. 

*'I was elected to the assembly from the 21st 
dist. of New York in the autumn of 1881 ; in 
1882 I served on the committee on cities. My 
chief work was endeavoring to get Judge 
Westbrook impeached on the ground of mal- 
feasance in office and collusion with Jay Gould 
in connection with railroad litigation. 

''Was re-elected, and in 1883, when the Re- 
publicans were in a minority, was their candi- 
date for speaker, thus becoming their titular 
leader on the floor. My main speech was on 
the report of the democratic committee giving 
Sprague, Republican, the seat wrongly held by 
Blair, Democrat, which report was reversed by 
the action of the Democratic House. Was 
again re-elected. The Republicans were in the 
majority; was a candidate for the speakership, 
and in the caucus received thirty votes to the 
forty-two received by the successful candidate, 
Mr. Sheard, who was backed both by the half- 
breeds who followed Senator Miller and the 
Stalwarts of President Arthur's train. This 
winter my main work has been pushing the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 355 

municipal reform bills for New York City, in 
connection with which I have conducted a ser- 
ies of investigations into its various depart- 
ments. Most of my bills have been passed and 
signed. 

"In the primaries before the Utica conven- 
tion I led the independents in my district, who 
for the first time in the history of New York 
City politics won against the machine men, 
though the latter were backed up by all the 
Federal and municipal patronage. At Utica 
I led the Edmunds men who held the balance 
of power between the followers of Blaine and 
of Arthur; we used our position to such good 
effect as to procure the election of all four 
delegates for Edmunds' men, though we were 
numerically not over seventy strong, barely a 
seventh of the total number of men at the con- 
vention. Am fairly well off. My recreations 
are: reading, riding (sailing?) and shooting." 

This modest summary throws a flood of 
light upon the Roosevelt character. He em- 
phasizes his prowess with rifle and fist. Hunt- 
ing, riding and sparring are some of his nota- 
ble achievements. He was once light weight 
champion, he says. 

Upon two points he differs from his college 
biographers. They give him credit for success 
in but one branch in college and for honorable 
mention in but one branch — natural history.* 
It is distinctly stated that he failed to attain 
the light weight championship of the school.* 

*C. Guild, Jr. Same. 



356 Roosevelt and the Republic 

In the legislature, the things which he calls 
attention to are the spectacular things, the 
abortive Westbrook impeachment; the con- 
test ; the investigation. In each case the sketch 
is used to strike at his opponents upon these 
occasions. Then there is the modest mention 
of what he did in connection with the speaker- 
ship against a strong combination. More re- 
markable was his prowess in winning for Ed- 
munds against overwhelming odds. No won- 
der Roosevelt should "point with pride." 



Roosevelt and the Republic 357 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

SIDELIGHTS UPON ROOSEVELT's PUBLIC ACTS AND 
POLITICAL TENETS. 

TARIFF. 

For four years Theodore Roosevelt belonged 
to a free trade club. He resigned only when 
he finally decided to support Blaine upon an 
anti-civil service and high tariff platform 
against Grover Cleveland, then the best official 
exponent of civil service reform and free trade. 

Roosevelt sneered at the "American system" 
in his Life of Benton. The Clay tariff w^as 
discriminatory against the South and unwise 
as a national policy, he said. In others of his 
writings he doubts the wisdom of the protec- 
tive system. 

When Roosevelt became a candidate for the 
vice-presidency, all this was changed. From 
that hour he became a thick and thin advocate 
of protection: 

''The present phenomenal prosperity has 
been won under a tariff that was made in ac- 
cordance with certain fixed principles, the 
most important of which is a determination to 
protect the interests of the American producer, 
business man, wage worker and farmer alike." 
(Addresses, 142.) 



r 



358 Roosevelt and the Republic 

"The general tariff policy is fundamentally 
based upon ample recognition of the difference 
between the cost of production — that is, the 
cost of labor, here and abroad." (The same.) 

''The trusts can be damaged by depriving 
them of the benefits of a protective tariff only 
on consideration of damaging all their smaller 
competitors and all the wage-workers whom 
they employ." 

It is safe to say that Roosevelt as member 
of the free trade club often sneered at the shal- 
low sophistry concealed but thinly in each of 
the above propositions. In fact, he probably 
thought them mere demagogic buncombe. 

Roosevelt's friends, political and personal. 

Roosevelt has a distinctly miscellaneous 
collection of political friends. We pass over 
^ ''Joe" Murray, his discoverer. This friendship 
* is natural enough. One would expect Roose- 
velt to be a friend of Senator Lodge. Prob- 
ably their political opinions are more nearly 
identical than those of any other two promi- 
nent public men. This is still true, although 
Lodge is a reactionary machine politician, not- 
withstanding his blue Massachusetts blood. 
No furious dust storm obscures Lodge's po- 
litical faith. 

Elihu Root, the defender of Boss Tweed, 
the William C. Whitney and Thomas F. Ryan 
strategist, is next to Lodge one of Roosevelt's 
closest friends. Common aims and common 
sentiments have drawn them together. Both 



Roosevelt and the Republic 359 

are "practical men," and both aim at the Ham- 
iltonian brand of government. Mr. Roose- 
velt's friendship for these men is easily ex- 
plained. 

Lucius Nathan Littauer, of Gloversville, N. 
Y,. is in the list of Roosevelt's close friends. 
There was a time when Roosevelt doted upon 
Francis B. Loomis, of Ohio. It is not record- 
ed that Roosevelt ever refused to receive Quay, 
of Pennsylvania, or withdrew from him a 
White House invitation. T. Edward Addicks 
at one time worked shoulder to shoulder with 
Theodore Roosevelt in the vineyard of the 
Lord. Thomas C. Piatt for a time was Roose- 
velt's political father confessor. Roosevelt 
himself announced that Piatt consented that 
Roosevelt should not be a vice-presidential 
candidate. Benjamin B. Odell, Roosevelt 
said, "was my trusted friend and adviser in 
every crisis." Senator Chauncey Depew was 
beloved of Roosevelt, just as was Ben Daniels, 
Gen. Leonard Wood and the rest. 

So far as history records Roosevelt pre- 
ferred Spooner to La Follette in Wisconsin. 
He loved Henry Payne. To Mark Hanna, of 
Ohio, he had no objection, except that Hanna 
was a possible presidential candidate. There 
is no indication that Roosevelt ever made 
strenuous objection to the political record of 
any man who had anything to give Roosevelt 
in the way of support or could further his po- 
litical fortunes in any way. It might have been 
different with Piatt 'and Odell when it was no 
longer theirs to give. 



360 Roosevelt and the Republic 



Disciples of Ananias have sorely beset the 
path of Theodore Roosevelt. His first record- 
ed meeting w^ith the tribe w^as at twenty-three 
years of age, w^hen he w^as collecting material 
for his naval history. 

Napoleon fed fat upon mendacity; scarcely 
better than Talleyrand. 

Thomas Jefferson w^as "constitutionally un- 
able to place a proper value upon truthful- 
ness." 

Just a plain liar v^as the late Senator A. P. 
Gorman; and Congressman Williams, of Mis- 
sissippi, and several others were no better. 

Judge Alton B. Parker made statements 
"unqualifiedly and atrociously false." 

Senator Chandler's statement was an "un- 
qualified and deliberate falsehood." 

Herbert W. Bowen, W. M. Whitney, Bell- 
amy Storer, Mrs. Storer, E. H. Harriman, and 
several others, secured honorable mention by 
the President as different types of prevarica- 
tors or plain liars. In each case, except that 
of Parker and Harriman, it was a question of 
veracity between the President and his victim. 
Sworn testimony in a collateral matter proved 
that Judge Parker's statement was not false. 
Harriman convicted Roosevelt of manufactur- 
ing testimony to support the President's side 
by altering the written record. 

So utterly wicked and untrustworthy had 
become the visitors to the White House that 
the President for sheer self-protection was 



Roosevelt and the Republic 361 

oblii^ed to issue through Secretary WilHam 
Loeb a statement that the President would be 
responsible for no statement made in conversa- 
tion. To hold the President responsible the 
statement must be made over his own signa- 
ture, or it must appear in a public document. 

In this connection the President has an in- 
teresting time with Washington correspond- 
ents. He talks freelv enough, takes them into 
his confidence, asks their advice, flatters them, 
gives them a notion of how to castigate the 
enemies of the President to the President's 
liking. But if they dare make a statement 
upon the authority of the President, or take a 
view of a public question different from that 
of the administration, thereafter there shall be 
one vacant chair. It is found in practice an 
excellent way of "trying out" public sentiment 
without committing one's self. It is also a 
first-class method of making the press of the 
country a department for the justification of 
administration views and policies. Senator 
Bailey, of Texas, probably realizes the force 
of this method when directed against a mem- 
ber of the national legislature. 

So well recognized is the Roosevelt pecu- 
liarity of remembering facts differently from 
all others who confer with him, when a differ- 
ent view of them becomes important, that Bi- 
ographer Francis E. Leupp makes explana- 
tion. It Is all because of Roosevelt's rapidity 
of speech, his failure to give heed to what 
others say, and his trick of slyly qualifying 
every statement. 



362 Roosevelt And the Republic 

Senator Smith has looked over a list of ap- 
plicants filed for the district attorneyship of 
his district. "Jones is far and away the best 
man for the place, Mr. President," the senator 
remarks to Roosevelt. 

**I fully agree with you, senator, Jones is al- 
most the best qualified of all the candidates." 

"Almost" has been slurred over and missed 
by the senator. "I fully agree with you," tells 
the whole story to him. He tells Jones the 
place is his for sure. When the next day the 
name of Robinson is sent to the Senate for the 
place, a whole sheaf of affidavits would not 
convince Senator Smith that the President had 
not deliberately deceived him. 

Roosevelt should have the benefit of Leupp's 
explanation. Its force depends upon whether 
we prefer being deceived by prevarication or 
by direct statement. 

ROOSEVELT AS A PIONEER REFORMER. 

"I am responsible for turning on the light, 
but I am not responsible for what the light 
shows," said Theodore Roosevelt in a recent 
address in Tennessee. 

President Roosevelt forgets. The search- 
light was in full glare when he came forward 
with his rushlight in order not to miss the il- 
lumination entirely. Henry D. Lloyd laid 
bare Standard Oil history twenty years before 
Roosevelt attacked the Standard Oil. Ida Tar- 
bell had newly beaten the path in which Roose- 
velt and his prosecutors walked. Thomas W. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 363 

Lawson had exposed the "system" and the 
Standard Oil while Roosevelt was still apolo- 
gizing for men of great wealth. He had held 
up to public scorn the crooks who had been ex- 
ploiting life insurance while President Roose- 
velt was freshly enjoying the office won partly 
by funds misapplied by these life insurance 
crooks from policy-holders' money and paid 
into the Roosevelt campaign barrel. Governor 
Hughes, as counsel for the Armstrong Com- 
mittee, was laying bare the iniquities of life 
insurance exploiters while President Roose- 
velt was furnishing the companies with new 
officers from his cabinet. 

Charles Edward Russell told the country of 
the railways and the packing house iniquities 
before Roosevelt's man Garfield had ever 
dreamed of them. It was an old story to the 
"muckrakers" when Knox got his wonderful 
injunction. Ferguson, of Duluth, and shippers 
all over the country were fairly besieging the 
Interstate Commerce Commission before 
Roosevelt noticed the railways. Governors of 
half a dozen states were fighting rate battles 
while Roosevelt was having Harriman furnish 
him a campaign fund. Van Sant, governor of 
Minnesota, started the Northern Securities 
case. Lincoln Steffens was exposing municipal 
corruption while Roosevelt was using the cor- 
ruptors as steps to political preferment. 
Graham Philips read aloud in his ''Treason of 
the Senate" the records of the very men whom 
Roosevelt most delighted to honor. Roosevelt 
attacked **muckrakers" to put a stop to this 



364 Roosevelt and the Republic 

carnival of "turning on the light." It was 
after finding that the light would not go out 
that he added his to the illumination. 



LITERARY ALLUSIONS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 

Roosevelt's ''muckrake" speech indicated 
how liable to error even a literary man may 
be in exploiting his knowledge by literary allu- 
sion. Muckrakers with Bunyan were the over- 
rich of whom America has numerous exam- 
ples, who set their heart upon the piling u[> 
of millions. He had no mind to find fault with 
their critics. 

Recently Roosevelt made an address at the 
dedication of Pennsylvania's state house. He 
took occasion to praise in that delectable 
stronghold of Hamiltonian political theory, the 
great work of the Hamiltonian school of poli- 
ticians. As a striking example he brought 
forth James Wilson, of the Constitutional Con- 
vention and of the Supreme Court. The bur- 
den of his song was the great services ren- 
dered by Wilson. It was striking. None but 
a ripe student of our history could have known 
of the exceptional services of this once great 
but now forgotten statesman. The newspaper 
claque took it up. Wilson ought to have a 
monument. But still riper scholars soon dis- 
covered that Wilson had earned deserved 
Ignominy and obscurity by dishonoring high 
position and marked achievement. It was fit- 
ting that he should become the patron saint of" 
the greatest monument of graft ever erected. in 



Roosevelt and the Republic 365 

the most corrupt state in the Union. But there 
is no other evidence that Roosevelt intended 
to be grimly ironical. 

THIS WAS different. 

"There are certain legislative actions which 
must be taken in a purely Pickwickian sense. 
Notable among these are the resolutions of 
sympathy for the alleged oppressed patriots 
and peoples of Europe. . . . During my 
term in the legislature resolutions were intro- 
duced demanding the recall of Minister Low- 
ell, assailing the Czar for his conduct tow^ard 
the Russian Jews, sympathizing with the Land 
League, the Dutch Boers, etc., etc., the pass- 
age of which we usually strenuously and suc- 
cessfully opposed. 

"Recently the Board of Aldermen of one of 
our great cities received a stinging rebuke, 
which, it is to be feared, the aldermanic intel- 
lect was too dense to fully appreciate.'* 
(T^ractical Politics, 43-44.) 

Roosevelt goes on to tell how an under sec- 
retary of the Russian legation returned the 
pro-Jew resolution, stating that so far as he 
was advised Russia had no diplomatic relations 
wath the aldermen in question and saying that 
the Czar's government was utterly indifferent 
to what the aldermen thought upon the sub- 
ject. 

When Roosevelt was President, strangely 
enough, he undertook to present to this Czar 
a petition protesting, as the resolutions had 



366 Roosevelt and the Republic 

protested, against the Czar's treatment of the 
Jews. It was received more politely, but no 
more hospitably than the aldermen's resolu- 
tion. But Roosevelt succeeded by a sharp 
''Yankee trick" in getting it before the Czar. 
This was different. 

Possibly Roosevelt had concluded that the 
aldermen were not so dense after all, and that 
the opinion of the people of a great American 
city was of some importance to the Czar even, 
as he found out later, to the dire disaster of his 
empire. Public opinion of the world was 
largely responsible for the Russian-Japanese 
war and its serious results to Russia. 

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY MODIFIED. 

"The men who object to government by 
injunction are, as regards essential principles 
of our government, in hearty sympathy with 
their remote skin-clad ancestors, who lived in 
caves, fought one another with stone-headed 
axes and ate the mammoth and the woolly 
rhinoceros. They are interesting as represent- 
ing a geological survival. . . . They are not 
in sympathy with men of good minds and 
sound civic morality." 

The fact that President Roosevelt is now 
sending message after message to Congress 
recommending the curtailing of this very 
"government by injunction" does not indicate 
that he is a "geological survival," or that he is 
"not in sympathy with men of good minds or 
sound civic morality." It means none of these 



Roosevelt and the Republic 367 

disagreeable things. Simply that the labor 
vote cannot now be securely caught by the 
promise of the ''full dinner pail," and that 
Roosevelt's "Martin Van Buren" needs 
strengthening with the labor vote if "my poli- 
cies" are to escape imminent danger. 

ROOSEVELT SQUEAMISH ABOUT HIS ASSOCIATES. 

Thomas C. Piatt, Benjamin B. Odell, the 
late Matthew Stanley Quay, have all been 
welcomed at the White House. Prince Henry 
was to be entertained. An invitation to the 
President's hospitality had been issued to Sen- 
ator Benjamin Tillman, of South Carolina. 
Tillman is respected as one of the cleanest and 
most honorable men in the United States Sen- 
ate. He had a personal encounter with his 
colleague. Roosevelt withdrew the invitation. 
This punctillious gentleman who boasted in 
his biography of being a light-weight pugilistic 
champion ; this gentleman whose biographers 
have him participating in a hotel-lobby brawl ; 
this gentleman who entertained and associated 
with prize fighters and wrestlers, as well as 
with the impossible Quay and the unspeakable 
Piatt, insulted Tillman by withdrawing the in- 
vitation. A gentleman's view of social pro- 
priety, properly takes no account of personal 
character. 

ROOSEVELT DISTRUSTS IDEALISTS. 

"The disunion movement among the North- 



368 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ern abolitionists was probably the most sense- 
less of all, for its success meant the abandon- 
ment of every hope of abolition." (Life of 
Morris, 359.) 

"After the war and until the day of his 
death his (Wendell Phillips) position on al- 
most every question was either mischievous or 
ridiculous and usually both." (Life of Ben- 
ton, 160.) 

"The assembly of puritan nobles were no 
more competent to institute self-government 
than a congress of abolitionists in i860 would 
have been competent to govern the United 
States." 

"If the constitution had made such a declara- 
tion, the abolition of slavery in all the states, 
it would never have been adopted, and the 
English-speaking people of America would 
have plunged into a condition of anarchy; 
while if the Republican platform of i860 had 
taken such a position, Lincoln would not have 
been elected, no war for the Union would have 
been waged, and instead of slavery being abol- 
ished, it would have been perpetuated in at 
least one of the confederacies into which this 
country would have been split." (Life of 
Cromwell, 193.) 

"The cause of the abolitionists had such a 
halo shed around it by the after course of 
events which they themselves did very little 
to shape, that it has been usual to speak of 
them with absurdly exaggerated praise. . . . 
Their share in abolishing slavery was far less 
than had been represented. . , . During all 



Roosevelt and the Republic 369 

of the terrible four years that the sad, strong, 
patient Lincoln suffered for the people, he had 
to dread the influence of the extreme abolition- 
ists only less than that of the copperheads. 
Many of the leaders possessed no ^ood quali- 
ties beyond their fearlessness and truth — quali- 
ties that were also possessed by the Southern 
fire-eaters." (Life of Benton, 158, 159, 160.) 

Probably few historians, turned prophets, 
w^ould have been so cocksure that material 
causes alone figured in the great Civil war, and 
that had they not figured in just that way slav- 
ery would have continued indefinitely. There 
is another view. If it were not for the anti- 
slavery agitation, there would have been no 
Republican party, no Abraham Lincoln, as a 
public man of prominence, no emancipation. 

Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips 
raised and held aloft the ideal-emblazoned 
standard around which rallied the hosts that 
followed Lincoln. They made straight and 
smooth his path. Only when Lincoln took up 
emancipation did he insure the success of .the 
great war. Few men would have fought for 
"state's rights," or ag-ainst them, had they not 
then meant slavery or no slavery to the con- 
tending hosts. Moral devotion to human free- 
dom, sympathy for human suffering, Avere the 
things which nerved the arms of the North in 
the struggle for the destruction of slavery. All 
honor to Abraham Lincoln, say the idealists. 
But in honoring him we cannot fail to honor 
also the Stowes, the Garrisons and the Phillips 
who made possible Abraham Lincoln and 



370 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Abraham Lincoln's success. In fact, Lincoln 
himself probably did greater service in giving 
to the world such prophetic utterances as the 
speech at Gettysburg and the letter to Pierce 
than he did in bringing the great Civil war to 
a successful issue. The great war was neces- 
sary in the sense in which it was inevitable, 
considering the condition of our civilization. 
But it really settled nothing, except relative 
military strength, least of all, that there should 
no longer be human slavery. It merely put a 
period to a certain form of this wrong. It did 
not settle or define the scope of "state's rights" 
in the sense of local self-government — merely 
that a state must not secede from the Union. 

[Note — No moral issue was ever settled 
nor will a great moral issue ever be settled by 
taking human life, whether it be by individual 
assassination or by the wholesale murder men 
call war.] 

ROOSEVELT AND SLAVERY. 

"Black slavery in Hayti was characterized 
by worse abuse than ever was the case in the 
United States, yet looking at the condition of 
the Republic now, it may well be questioned 
whether it would not have been greatly to her 
benefit in the end, to have slavery continue a 
century or so longer, its ultimate extinction 
being certain, than to have her obtain freedom, 
as she actually did, with the results that have 
flowed from her action." (Life of Benton, 
158.) 



Roosevelt and the Republic 371 

"The presence of the negro in the Southern 
states is a legacy from the time when we were 
ruled by a transoceanic aristocracy. The whole 
civilization of the future owes a debt of grati- 
tude greater than can be expressed in words, 
to that Democratic policy which has kept the 
temperate zones of the new and the newest 
world as a heritage for the white people." 
(American Ideals, 289.) 

"A perfectly stupid race can never rise to 
a very high plane — the negro, for instance, has 
been kept down as much by lack of intellectual 
development as by anything else." Roosevelt 
sees misfortune in the ignorant negro elector- 
ate. 

Slavery could not have lived in any event. 
Whites must rule. The great war after all did 
not accomplish so much? 

REVERENCE FOR THE LAW. 

"Let reverence for the law be taught in 
schools and colleges, be written in primers and 
spelling books, be published from pulpits, be 
proclaimed in legislative houses and enforced 
in the courts of justice." 

And, one might add, he practiced by the 
chief executive of the nation and the executives 
of the states. 

WEALTHY YOUNG MEN AND POOR YOUNG MEN. 

"I would teach the young man, that he who 
has not wealth owes his first duty to his fam- 



372 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ily, but he who has means owes his to the 
state. It is ignoble to go on heaping money 
on money. I would preach the doctrine of 
work to all, and to the man of wealth un- 
remunerative work." 

Should government then be turned over to 
the wealthy men of leisure? We have men 
whose ideals are: "Let everybody earn his 
way and then everybody will have leisure to 
serve the state. Until that time let everybody 
take time to do so." 

PUNISHMENT FOR CRIMINALS. 

In a letter to Governor Durbin, of Indiana, 
Mr. Roosevelt says that lynching might be 
prevented by proper administration of the law 
to "secure swift vengeance upon the offender." 
This is not the present day theory of modern 
penologists. They doubt the "swift ven- 
geance" idea. 

"In many of the cases of lynch law which 
have come to my knowledge, the effect has 
been healthy for the community, but some- 
times great injustice has been done. Gen- 
erally, vigilantes, by a series of executions, do 
really good work." (i, Winning of the West, 
172.) 



"It would be difficult to over-estimate the 
damage done by the example and action of a 
man like Governor Altgeld of Illinois, 



Roosevelt and the Republic 373 

Whether he is honest or not in his beHefs is 
not of the slightest consequence. He is as 
implacable a foe of decent government as is 
Tweed himself, and is capable of doing far 
more harm than Tweed." (So would agree 
William C. Whitney, Anthony Brady, Thomas 
F. Ryan, John D. Rockefeller, E. H. Harriman,. 
Elihu Root, and other very respectable friends 
of Mr. Roosevelt.) 

"The governor who began his career by par- 
doning anarchists and whose most noteworthy 
feat since was his bitter, undignified, but for- 
tunately, futile campaign against an upright 
judge, who sentenced the anarchists, is the foe 
of every true American and the foe particu- 
larly of every honest workman." Roosevelt 
classes with Altgeld, Tom Watson, and several 
Western governors. In the case of Altgeld 
the very temperate and intelligent denuncia- 
tion is almost as well founded as in the case 
of Tom Watson. 

Reckless labor agitators, Roosevelt says, are 
a real peril. The man who denounces the 
judiciary or military is just as bad. Stock 
speculators exert an influence worse than the 
average murderer or bandit. 

gouverneur morris. 

Next to Alexander Hamilton, Roosevelt 
found most to admire in the political philoso- 
phy of the aristocratic but cynical Revolution- 
ary patriot, Gouverneur Morris. A single in- 
cident will place Morris and his political 



374 Roosevelt and the Republic 

philosophy. He and some of his South Caro- 
lina co-workers were contending strenuously 
for life senators with large property qualifica- 
tions, as well as for a radical curtailment of the 
suffrage, when Dr. Benjamin Franklin, one of 
the very few real democrats in the Constitu- 
tional Convention arose and remarked that he 
did not concede the elected the right to curtail 
the rights of those who had elected them. 
Some of the worst rogues he had ever known 
were the richest rogues. It did not change 
Morris' conviction, but the property qualifica- 
tion went glimmering. 

PENSION ORDER "nO. 78." 

For some years old soldiers had been be- 
sieging Congress for a law making a certain 
age proof conclusive of disability in Pension 
matters, or an old-age Pension for veterans. 
Pension commissioners, pensioners, congress- 
men and presidents all tacitly agreed that it 
was strictly a matter for legislation. 

Roosevelt's pension commissioner became a 
strenuous advocate of the idea, but congress- 
men were immovable. The commissioner 
thought of an easier way than that to put his 
ideas in effect. Promptly he laid his plan be- 
fore President Roosevelt. President Roosevelt 
might issue an order to that effect and the 
thing was done. Without hesitation Roose- 
velt cut the legislative knot by an executive 
order, amending the pension laws so as to give 
graduated old-age pensions to veterans above 



Roosevelt and the Republic 375 

sixty-two years of age. There was a storm 
of protest against fiscal legislation by the 
President without the concurrence of Con- 
gress. Roosevelt met the criticism by a tricky 
and pettifogging interpretation of the pension 
laws. Partisanship prevented Congress from 
taking the President to task for illegal as- 
sumption of powers. Finally the order was 
sanctioned by legislation, thus admitting its 
original illegality. 

ADMIRAL WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY. 

This is not the time nor the place to open 
the unfortunate Schley-Sampson controversy. 
Theodore Roosevelt had nothing to do with 
its inception. 

Schley, as everybody knows, was the rank- 
ing naval officer in the Santiago naval battle. 
It was the chief naval battle of the Spanish 
war. With brother officers he had submitted 
obediently to seeing a junior of slighter ex- 
perience jumped over his head and thrust into 
the place of promised glory. 

Fate was with Schley. He fought the en- 
gagement. His Brooklyn was longer under 
fire, bore more directly the brunt of a concen- 
trated Spanish attack, received greater punish- 
ment, left more of her peculiar marks on the 
foe than any other American vessel. Distinct- 
ly did Schley lead the battle. 

Yet the absent Sampson, with inconceivable 
meanness, tried to rob Schley of the credit for 
.what he did, and the naval clique, sharing in 



37^ Roosevelt and the Republic 

his jealousy, took up the Sampson fight. Their 
minion charged Schley with cowardice and 
obliged him to defend himself by demanding 
an inquiry. Of course the absurd charge was 
not proved. Schley's bravery had been almost 
reckless in the battle. But it gave his per- 
secutors an opportunity to brand him with the 
iniquitous charge of inefficiency, although he 
located the Spaniards and took a leading part 
in destroying them. He got results, the real 
test of military efficiency. But Schley was not 
sufficiently obsessed by the Eighteenth cen- 
tury notion of "Gentleman." He would treat 
his ''bullies" like human beings. Schley was 
civil even to the enlisted varlets. He must not 
have the glory. 

No naval officer in the history of the country 
has been treated so outrageously by official 
America as has Schley. Roosevelt distinctly 
lost an opportunity for the display of moral 
courage and a sense of justice when he refused 
to award Schley the meed of praise and grati- 
tude which Schley so richly merited. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 377 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 
some recent history. 

President Roosevelt's power and popularity 
had reached its zenith in 1907. 

Thomas B. Reed, late speaker of the House 
of Representatives, had recognized in Roose- 
velt the ''original discoverer of the ten com- 
mandments." Newspaper claquers were sure 
that he had originated all good government 
policies. But the quizzical smile was absent 
from the vociferous assertion of it. The fact 
that it was a Roosevelt policy was proof con- 
clusive that it was a good policy ; the fact that 
it was a good policy was equally conclusive 
that it was a Roosevelt policy. 

Naturally it followed that anybody who 
doubted the supreme wisdom of Roosevelt or 
the supreme holiness of his policies was an 
enemy to the public, a fool, or a knavish cor- 
ruptionist in the pay of the "interests." 

Nobody knew exactly what the Roosevelt 
policies really were. The millions of words, 
spoken and written, in which these policies 
were set forth, had been used in the diplomatic 
sense — to conceal the ideas of the author. 
Only one policy was absolutely unmistakable: 
Trust the President; give all power to the 



37^ Roosevelt and the Republic 

President; he will see to it that his dear chil- 
dren, the American people, do not suffer. 

Through the persistent hammering of news- 
paper claquers, and a skillful use of political 
influence and the spoils of office, the majority 
of congressmen and senators of both parties 
had been dragooned into submission. In im- 
portant things, the House was absolutely 
supine. It made a nasty, childish exhibition 
of spite in connection with the characteristi 
cally egotistical and illegal order intended to, 
revolutionize by presidential ukase the spelling 
of the American people. But that was merely 
a national joke, a Rooseveltism. Cuba, Santi' 
Domingo, Panama, the Philippines, the cor 
porations, the trusts, the tariff, had all been 
turned over to the tender mercies of the Presi- 
dent, the good or the bad, each to receive the 
deserved reward. 

Some state governments had become per- 
niciously active, especially in railway and trust 
matters. He had told them solemnly some 
time before : 

*'No advance whatever has been made by the 
states, as a collective hody^ in dealing with these 
corporations." 

That was one of Roosevelt's jokes, for he 
knew that the only representative of the states, 
"as a collective body," was the Federal govern- 
ment, and he did not want to say right out 
that the Federal government had made no 
progress. But individual states had made all 
the progress thus far made. Roosevelt was 
warning them off his preserves. 



K.OOSEVELT AND THE RePUBLIC 379 

Every small politician seeking preferment 
had hitched his little cart to the Roosevelt 
bandwagon and had joined in the shouting. 
Little politicians with enterprise and imagina- 
tion began to proclaim loudly that the country 
could in no way get along without Roosevelt. 
Precedents set by Washington and followed 
by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson 
must be cast to the winds, for this ''greater 
President." "My policies" must be carried out 
without halt, and but one man in all America 
could be relied upon to do this. Four years 
more of Roosevelt would mean the Ultima 
Thule of governmental wisdom and righteous- 
ness. No problems would ever again disturb 
the serene and well-earned slumber of the Re- 
public. Even the American people, heretofore 
independent and self-reliant, seemed ready to 
accept the estimate of the claquers and the 
small politicians with the "little father" idea 
of government which it implied. "Now it was 
Rome indeed, and room enough when there is 
in it but one only man." 

Roosevelt had made his moving-picture trip 
to Panama, in order to beat down with the 
weight of presidential assertion, all carping 
criticism. Bigelow and others of his kind had 
been put to confusion. With the facility of a 
"lightning change artist" Panama had again 
shifted its management. President Roosevelt 
had secured two prominent western railway 
attorneys and lobbyists, presumably of the re- 
pentant class, to hunt down Harriman and the 
Standard Oil crowd. Harriman had said un- 



380 Roosevelt and the Republic 

kind things about Roosevelt and had refused 
to contribute to a campaign the fall before, in 
w^hich Roosevelt v^as so much interested that 
he sent a cabinet officer to New York to make 
a public speech charging the anti-machine can- 
didate w^ith the murder of President McKinley 
or responsibility therefor. But seeing it was 
Roosevelt and his chief strategist, there could 
be no suspicion that this at the time was deni- 
ogogy, or that now President Roosevelt was 
trying to get even with Harriman or to play 
against one another the feuds of big business 
interests. Curiously enough, however, the 
newspaper friends of Roosevelt announced at 
the time that Harriman made the unkind re- 
marks, that Roosevelt was going after him. 

The always interesting, though sometimes 
cynical New York Siiny thirty years ago, in ad- 
vising a western young man with oratorical 
aspirations how to secure popularity leading 
to political preferment, told him to denounce 
the Mormons and flay the Chinamen. Neither 
had any friends. It was perfectly safe. Also 
sure to be popular. Otherwise he must con- 
fine himself to platitudes and boasting of the 
greatness of the country. Roosevelt tried 1 
similar system with Harriman and the Stand 
ard Oil. He has, indeed, been most fortunate 
in his enemies. In this case, as in many others, 
the interests attacked richly deserved it on gen- 
eral principles. As to whether these interests 
or the Roosevelt methods are the greater men- 
ace is a fit subject for meditation. 

Other ''interests" had been in a desperate 



Roosevelt and the Republic 381 

fight in Chicago. Defeat stared at them. They 
wanted the millions concealed in Chicago 
franchises. Roosevelt was asked for aid. 
Righteously he responded. This municipal 
election was especially a Federal afifair. Local 
self-government — the divorcing of national 
politics from municipal problems — was not to 
be considered. Roosevelt's postmaster, a ma- 
chine politician, became the candidate of the 
''interests" with Roosevelt's consent. Roose- 
velt in a statement appealed for support for 
this candidate. The Federal machine did the 
rest. Municipal problems were decided ac- 
cording to the exigencies of national politics, 
and to the everlasting benefit of the "inter- 
ests." Franchises worth manv millions, which 
the people of Chicago were about to reclaim, 
went to the enrichment of overwealthy pro- 
moters. No doubt Roosevelt drew a fine dis- 
tinction between this case, a similar action 
which he had declared so wicked in New York 
City. 

Through the long hard winter, railroad 
transportation had broken down so completely 
as to show the trouble to be fundamental and 
radical. Exploitation of the transportation 
svstem for private gain was demonstrated as 
the real cause of the trouble, making apparent 
the ridiculous inadequacy of such measures as 
the railway rate law.* 

Private Secretary William Loeb, Jr., had 

*See article by the author in Moody's Maga- 
zine for March, 1907. 



382 Roosevelt and the Republic 

discovered a conspiracy to defeat Roosevelt's 
policies. Roosevelt's newspaper claquers ex- 
ploited it and then denounced it. When 
dragged in all its deformity to the light of day 
this infamous conspiracy was found to be an 
expressed preference on the part of certain 
gentlemen of wealth for a presidential candi- 
date other than Roosevelt or any person whom 
he may name as his successor. An intimation 
was given that these wealthy men might be 
willing to spend some money to secure their 
proferences. 

It was just such a conspiracy as nominated 
and elected President McKinley in 1896; 
Roosevelt and McKinley in 1900; Roosevelt in 
1904, and others before. In this case the "con- 
spiracy" was contemplated merely. Then 
Harriman and the insurance interests and 
other wealthy men actually contributed hun- 
dreds of thousands in support of Roosevelt's 
campaign. The "conspiracy" was carried out. 

But there was a difference. Most other men 
would either have refused the Harriman and 
insurance contributions, and the support of 
such men as Piatt, Depew and Penrose, or he 
would have refused to hold them up afterward 
to public execration. But Roosevelt is practi- 
cal. Accepting the benefit of tainted funds 
puts Roosevelt under no obligations to anyone. 
He can campaign with groups of political 
friends upon a definite platform or agree with 
them upon a programme of legislation, and 
when he has been elected he can repudiate this 
programme, adopt one of his own and de- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 383 

nounce everybody w^ho fails to follow him, in- 
cluding his quondam friends. It is all perfectly 
proper and highminded — seeing it is Roose- 
velt. 

Roosevelt had been awarded the Nobel prize 
for the promotion of peace. By a paradox, if 
not an irony of fate, the man who in this gen- 
eration has done most to glorify and foster the 
military spirit in America was crowned as a 
prince of peace. That, too, for merely promot- 
ing a meeting of parties in a settlement which 
was inevitable, in a war which his diplomacy 
had aided in precipitating. 

As a result of the award, America and 
Roosevelt loomed larger in The Hague con- 
ference soon to open — a conference somewhat 
disappointing in its accomplishment. 

Japanese menace in San Francisco had been 
handled skilfully by the administration, pro- 
moting in a measure the plan of the general 
government to regulate internal affairs at home 
indirectly by treaties with foreign powers. 
Elihu Root's justification clouded the issue. 
States were undoubtedly bound by treaty 
regulations covering matters properly subject 
to regulation by treaty. Whether local public 
schools is a proper subject for treaty regula- 
tion, however, still remains a problem of some 
importance. 

John Temple Graves, speaking ostensibly for 
Southerners, proposed in all seriousness that 
the Republican and Democratic parties should 
unite upon President Roosevelt as their next 
candidate for the presidency, and that William 



384 Roosevelt and the Republic 

J. Bryan should make the nomination. Roose- 
velt had good reason to beHeve that the coun- 
try would approve anything he might do or 
say. 

At the Jamestown Exposition, using the 
modest "we," President Roosevelt told the 
country with commendable frankness what his 
intentions were as to the future of the Re- 
public. Other chapters were added at Indian- 
apolis and elsewhere. He would be tolerant, 
even generous, with everybody who behaved 
to suit him, but those who did wrong, from 
his standpoint, would do well to have a care. 
The income tax which Roosevelt had de- 
nounced ten years "before, became in a twin- 
kling a ''Roosevelt pdlicy," given a place of 
honor with the good 'shf j^-subsidy scheme. In- 
heritance tax, too, heretofore left to the states, 
was to become a' source of Federal revenue 
and incidentally'inheritances a subject of Fed- 
eral regulation and control. 

About this time Roosevelt had discovered 
the peculiar infamy of his good friend and 
former adviser, E.' H. Harriman. So disreputa- 
ble had this gentle'man become that it was 
necessary that Roosevelt should change the 
text of correspondence before publication, in 
order to demonstrate Harriman's untruthful- 
ness. At this time three western labor leaders 
were on trial for their lives. Roosevelt, in 
order to show his fair-mindedness to all 
classes, included them with Harriman in a 
blanket denunciation as undesirable citizens. 
If he had denounced Harriman alone men of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 3S5 

Harriman's trend of thou£^ht might have 
thought Roosevelt inspired with class preju- 
dice. Denouncing labor leaders alone might 
subject the President to the same charge. De- 
nunciation of both at once would demonstrate 
fairness and bring approval. 

Unhappily this episode marked the begin- 
ning of a decline in Roosevelt's popularity. 
Despite the strenuous noise of the newspaper 
claquers, the public murmured disapproval. 
Presidential attacks upon men on trial for 
their lives looked like interfering with the 
course of orderly justice. It was worse than 
the denunciation of judges in some of the 
Federal prosecutions and of the jury in the 
Tyner case. The thing hardly harmonized 
with the ''square deal" doctrine of the Presi- 
dent, especially since land cases had been held 
up to strengthen or at least to avoid weaken- 
ing the prosecution. Roosevelt's justification 
was distinctly pettifogging. The public was 
growing weary. When the "nature fakir" ful- 
minations came out there was almost a guffaw. 
Americans had not lost altogether their sense 
of proportion. They could still recognize 
palpable folly, even in a popular hero. 

Roosevelt held serenely to his dramatic 
methods. An attack by a Federal bureau upon 
the Standard Oil Company, rehearsing ancient 
history, to a great extent, was timed so as to 
coincide with a sensational fine ($29,000,000) 
and produce a maximum public thrill. 

Financial clouds had been gathering. As 
early as March, Secretary Cortelyou, of the 



2,S6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Treasury Department, came with government 
monev ($25,000,000) to the aid of the Wall 
Street fraternity. Stocks continued to decline. 
By August the slump had reached three billion 
dollars in shrinkage of securities. Financial 
storm was clearly presaged. 

Roosevelt at Provincetown took up the de- 
fense of the administration. He conceded that 
it needed a defense. ''Not guilty," was the 
verdict. He had not caused the slump. Ex- 
tend Federal powers and all would be well. 
He had the last generous word in the Moyer- 
Haywood case. Well pleased, Roosevelt start- 
ed for the West and South. Here he repeated 
what he had said many times before upon 
multitudinous subjects. He would not modify 
or change his policies. Many speeches were 
made in the Middle West and the Southern 
Mississippi region. 

A characteristic incident took place on 
Roosevelt's trip down the river. The boat 
upon which the President travelled got into a 
' ice with a rival packet, and the rival came out 
Mhead. Not sufficiently manly to take his de- 
icat, the Roosevelt captain charged his rival 
vvith having violated navigation regulations. 
President Roosevelt had been placed in danger. 
The President peremptorily and arbitrarily 
ordered by telegraph that the rival skipper be 
suspended. As it turned out the skipper was 
acting properly within his rights. Roosevelt's 
act was illegal and unwarranted. 

President Roosevelt plunged into the Louisi- 
ana wilderness for his favorite pastime, the 



Roosevelt and the Republic 387 

chase, just as he had hunted in Texas and 
Colorado in 1905. Shooting defenceless ani- 
mals from ambush with repeating rifles, or 
worrying them to death with dogs, is no doubt 
a very manly form of sport. It indicates such 
supreme courage. Considering the newspaper 
exploitation given such an elevating pastime 
when indulged in by the President of the 
United States, it is especially fortunate that 
Roosevelt was willing to experience the joy of 
it while still in the lime-light as chief magis- 
trate. 

Politics, national, state and municipal, had 
been President Roosevelt's especial care dur- 
ing the years of his incumbency. Inspired 
newspaper writers let it be known that Presi- 
dent Roosevelt would dictate his successor. 
Secretary of War Taft was the heir-apparent. 
Small politicians, still seeking to ride into 
place on the w^ave of Roosevelt popularity, 
joined newspaper claquers in urging Roose- 
velt as a third-term candidate. Roosevelt re- 
mained silent. He let it be understood that 
he wanted Taft. All other candidates were 
under suspicion of not being sufficiently wed- 
ded to "my policies." It was hinted darkly 
that if Taft was not accepted Roosevelt might 
be forced into the nomination to save the 
''policies." 

Secretary Taft took a spectacular trip to the 
Philippines. There he told the Filipinos, in 
parliament assembled, how they would be 
favored if they were good, but how unwise 
action might put off indefinitely the day of 



;^S>S Roosevelt and the Republic 

their independence* It all kept the big secre- 
tary in the public eye. 

Federal influence and patronage, the news- 
papers said, were used generously in promot- 
ing Taft sentiment and securing Taft dele- 
gates. Certain it is, the inner circles of poli- 
tics knew that Taft was to be the man, if the 
administration could so order it. Private Sec- 
retary Cortelyou, so talented as to do equally 
well in any cabinet position, was warned not 
to trespass upon the Taft preserves. An as- 
sistant of Mr. Cortelyou in the Post Ofhce De- 
partment, who had been using postal patron- 
age in shaping political destiny, was 'obliged 
to transfer his allegiance to Taft. 

Beginning with the San Francisco school 
episode, Japanese troubles loomed big as the 
year advanced. Rumor came that President 
Roosevelt feared developments and had order- 
ed the battleship squadron to the Pacific coast. 
This was denied at the White House, for some 
obscure reason. Soon it proved correct. Many 
Americans interpreted the move as a demon- 
stration to overawe the Japanese by a show of 
superior strength. This was the view gen- 
erally taken in Europe. No doubt the admin- 
istration had information of sinister activity 
on the part of the tricky, treacherous. Oriental 
Yankees. Since the demonstration of their 
hypocrisy in Korea and Manchuria, Japanese 
pleas of disinterested holiness are not so likely 
to be taken at full face value. Admitting all 
this, it is more likely that the cruise of the fleet 
was quite as much a piece of stage business 



Roosevelt and the Republic 389 

intended to arouse the American military spirit 
and secure more generous naval appropria- 
tions. This cruise served to demonstrate the 
humiliating weakness of the navy in one re- 
spect — its total lack of adequate colliers for ex- 
tended cruises. But if the country is to have 
three-fourths of a billion in useless warships, it 
is difficult to see why anybody should object 
to have the President use them as a bogey- 
man to frighten the Japanese or as a circus 
for the delectation of the American people. 

A most important municipal election was in 
progress in Cleveland, Ohio. The "best mayor 
of the best governed city in the United States" 
was on the eve of consummating a solution of 
the traction problem of that city especiall}^ 
advantageous to the people of Cleveland but 
peculiarly distasteful to the men who had been 
making millions out of traction franchises. In 
fact, these franchise beneficiaries, pressed re- 
lentlessly to the wall by Cleveland's efficient 
mayor, were fighting for life. All other bene- 
ficiaries of municipal franchises the country 
over were interested in their menaced brethren. 
Cleveland's mayor was standing for re-election 
in order to complete the work in hand. 

Menaced ''interests" appealed to Roosevelt 
as they had in the Chicago case. By a mass- 
ing of forces against Cleveland, they hoped to 
defeat the popular champion, save the rich 
grazing ground, and discourage such attempts 
on the part of other cities. Roosevelt's re- 
SDonse was quick and hearty. Congressman 
Theodore Burton, of tried popularity in Cleve- 



390 Roosevelt and the Republic 

land and of recognized value and ability in the 
national legislature, but with no experience in 
municipal government, was appealed to per- 
sonally by President Roosevelt and Secretary 
Taft to save the situation. Burton was to 
enter the field as a partisan candidate, cloud 
the issues, and save the municipal fleshpots 
for the menaced "interests." Probably it was 
not put in just that way, but that would have 
been the only possible result of a Burton 
victory. 

Congressman Burton yielded to the skillful 
blandishments of President Roosevelt and 
Secretary Taft. It was said that he was of- 
fered the Ohio senatorship in return. That 
was certainly a paltry price for Burton's en- 
viable record as a high-minded public servant. 

Federal power wielded by so skillful a poli- 
tician as the President failed to save the men- 
aced interests. Cleveland's electorate was too 
intelligent to be fooled by the false partisan 
note, even from the White House. Roosevflt 
lost. If any other President, politician, or 
political boss, had attempted what Roosevelt 
attempted in this case, the action would ha\ c 
been recognized among all friends of decent 
government as sinister to the last degree. In- 
deed, in any other person the motives would 
have been infinitely mean and unworthy, and 
the whole scheme utterly indefensible. Said 
Roosevelt in his American Ideals: 

"The party man who blindly follows party, 
rieht or wrong, and who fails to make that 



Roosevelt anuthe Republic 391 

party in any way better, commits a crime 
against the country." 

This was probably intended to apply to such 
men as Congressman Burton. 

Oklahoma's constitution offended President 
Roosevelt. It was too hospitable to advanced 
democratic ideas. At first Roosevelt an- 
nounced unofficially through the inspired press 
that he would refuse to approve this constitu- 
tion and deny statehood to the populistic ter- 
ritory, notwithstanding the mandate of Con- 
gress. The "feeler" indicated that such acticn 
would be dangerous to Roosevelt's popularity 
Roosevelt "hedged." He sent Secretary Taft 
into the territory to try to defeat the constitu- 
tion at the polls. Taft failed, and Roosevelt 
accepted the constitution with some minor 
changes. 

Threatened financial trouble came in Octo- 
ber. The last push to the tottering fabric of 
Wall Street finances was given by a clique en- 
gaged in the profitable pastime of "freezing 
out," of desirable corporate enterprises, a 
weaker group of rivals. Panic came. "Sound" 
money, that thing which had called forth such 
peans of worship for the past decade, was so 
sound as to disappear promptly from the chan- 
nels of business. Banks saved themselves by 
abandoning other business enterprises to their 
fate. They grabbed all the "honest" money 
in sight and held it in their vaults. Most men, 
not bankers or Wall Street gamblers, kept 
their heads and saved the country from one 
of the worst panics and industrial smashes in 



39^ Roosevelt and the Republic 

the country's history, but not from a serious 
panic and subsequent depression. 

Causes of the trouble are undoubtedly deep- 
seated. This is not the place to discuss them. 
Suffice it to say that our banking system was 
demonstrated to be the weakest of weak reeds. 
Metal money, as has always been the case in 
crises, scurried out of sight. Despised paper 
money, issued without the pretense of legality 
in the form of clearing-house drafts or certifi- 
cates, helped to tide over the difficulty. Until 
we become sufficiently civilized to cease wor- 
shiping certain heaps of yellow metal as our 
financial saviors, such interesting little epi- 
sodes are likely to recur. 

Secretary Cortelyou, of the Treasury De- 
partment, loaned bankers more than two him- 
dred millions of dollars without interest, which 
they in turn promptly loaned out to the needy 
at the usurious rates of interest which bank 
hoarding had brought about. Bankers made 
some fat ''killings," and financial kings gath- 
ered some very juicy plums which up to that 
time had dangled out of their reach. 

All of which demonstrated that our banking 
and money systems recently held up as sacred 
things are insecure from capstone to founda- 
tion, not only in methods but in principle. In- 
cidentally, it started a wave of distress at the 
Atlantic which rolled quickly to the Pacific, 
engulfing thousands in its path. A period of 
commercial and industrial depression was 
pretty clearly indicated. 

Naturally, in the light of precedent; the ad- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 393 

ministration was blamed for the panic. Finan- 
ciers, politicians, even Supreme Court justices, 
criticised Roosevelt sharply. His clamorously 
menacing methods had frightened timid capital 
and caused the smash. Immediatelv the news- 
paper claquers, White House inspired, started 
the defense. Roosevelt was still a third term 
possibility. His prestige must not sufifer. Cab- 
inet officers took up the defensive fight. Roose- 
velt himself joined in the fray. Secretary Taft 
made lengthy speeches intended to prove 
Roosevelt entirely innocent. 

Such a situation was not new to Roosevelt. 
As a historian he had written : 

*'It being almost always the case that the 
existing administration receives more credit if 
the country is prosperous, and greater blame 
if it is not, than in either case it is rightfully 
entitled to." (Life of Benton, 196.) 

Roosevelt had received his full meed of 
credit for prosperity. The clamor of it had 
been dinned into men's ears for ten long years, 
and six of them had been written down to 
Roosevelt's credit. But Roosevelt preferred 
that others should bear the counterbalancing 
blame. 

"It is not possible to secure prosperity by 
law, but it is possible to destroy it," said 
Roosevelt years before in denouncing the dan- 
gerous doctrines of his opponents. That was 
before the Roosevelt regime. Now the propo- 
sition of Roosevelt was to be reversed. Roose- 
velt's policies had secured prosperity by law. 



394 Roosevelt and the Republic 

Had not the claquers demonstrated it. But 
to destroy it — perish the thought ! 

Things were different in 1893, when the 
wicked Cleveland had engulfed the country at 
one fell swoop. 

''The distress was a Godsend to the Whig 
politicians. They fairly raved at the adminis- 
tration and denounced all its acts, good and 
bad alike, with fluent and incoherent impartial- 
ity." (Life of Benton, 205.) 

Roosevelt wrote this of the Whigs of 1837- 
40. He might just as truthfully have written 
it of his own partisans of 1893-6. And, extra- 
ordinary as it may appear, the sophisticated 
Roosevelt **raved" with the rest "with fluent 
and incoherent impartiality." The platform 
of 1896, which he so strenuously supported, 
said: 

''For the first time since the Civil war the 
people have witnessed the calamitous conse- 
quences of Democratic control of the govern- 
ment. ... In the broad effect of its policy 
it has precipitated panic, blighted industry and 
trade with prolonged depression, closed fac- 
tories, reduced work and wages, halted enter- 
prise, crippled American production," etc. , . . 

In 1900 the platform upon which Roosevelt 
was elected asserted : 

"After a term of Democratic legislation and 
administration, business was dead, industry 
paralyzed and national credit disastrously im- 
paired. . . . Capital was hidden away; 
. . . labor distressed and unemployed. . . . 
The Republican party . . . promised to re- 



Roosevelt and the Republic 395 

store prosperity by means of . . . the pro- 
tective tariff and . . . the gold standard. 
. . . Prosperity more general and more 
abundant than we have ever known has fol- 
lowed these enactments. . . . Capital is 
fully employed, labor profitably occu- 
pied. . . ." 

Roosevelt was re-elected in 1904 on a plat- 
form containing this declaration: 

*'We found the country after four years of 
Democratic rule in an evil plight. . . . Pub- 
lic credit lowered, . . , revenues declining, 
. . . debt growing, . . . labor unem- 
ployed, . . . business sunk in depression, 
. . . hope faint, . . . confidence gone. 
. . . We met these unhappy conditions vig- 
orously, effectively and at once. . . . In- 
dustry stimulated by wise laws has expanded 
to a degree never before known. . . . Under 
the Dingley tariff labor was fully employed," 
etc. 

Evidently President Roosevelt had not read 
his party platforms when he declared that "it 
is not possible to secure prosperity by law." 
He must have forgotten all about them now 
that he is contending that legislation and ad- 
ministration did not destroy it. 

One of the most important campaign docu- 
ments circulated for Roosevelt in 1904 was 
entitled "Lest We Forget." It told how Cleve- 
land and his policies killed prosperity. 

That was patriotism. Now that the steel is 
at Roosevelt's breast, to hint that Theodore 
Roosevelt has done what Theodore Roosevelt 



396 Roosevelt and the Republic 

in like circumstances accused Grover Cleve- 
land of having done, is pure demagogy. It 
was a king, too, who saw things so differently 
when his own ox was gored. Possibly the 
American people have lost their sense of 
humor. 

Roosevelt was not bowed down by the accu- 
sation. It seemed to stimulate his rabbit-like 
literary fecundity. Enemies were literally 
overwhelmed by a deluge of annual message. 
It discussed and settled off-hand every ques- 
tion under the sun. Summed up it was a 
hodgepodge of all of Roosevelt's former 
speeches and messages, vitalized by an urgent 
appeal for more power for the Federal govern- 
ment in general and for the executive in par- 
ticular. Newspapers failed to publish it in 
full. Few read the text. 

Despite Roosevelt's skillful maneuvering his 
political antagonists in his own party pushed 
him into a corner where in order to protect 
the candidacy of Taft, he was obliged to re- 
assert his own decision against a third term. 

Immediately Congress became indifferent to 
Roosevelt and his policies. Roosevelt was 
eliminated from newspaper ''scare heads." 
Even the faithful claquers grew lanquid. 
There were indications that Roosevelt would 
be pushed to the side of the stage. Always 
is Congress averse to a big legislative pro- 
gramme before a presidential election. By 
common consent it was merely to pass routine 
acts this session. 

An attack upon Admiral Brownson and 



Roosevelt and the Republic 397 

naval critics brought Roosevelt aj^ain to the 
front. Even former admirers shook their 
heads over the violence of the assault upon 
the conscientious, honorable and courageous 
officer. Indeed it looked as though a medical 
favorite had caused the President to ignore 
orderly procedure and adopt a course which 
persisted in v^ould make "ducks and drakes" of 
naval discipline. 

President saw his critics gaining ground. 
Public attention was turning toward others. 
Roosevelt decided that he must keep up the 
clamor if he would hold the center of the 
stage to the end of his term. He would give 
Congress a programme that would keep the 
country looking his way at least until ad- 
journment. 

Heralded properly in inspired papers, the 
fulmination came January 31. It was attached 
to a court decision upon a labor law. In many 
respects the special message coincides pecu- 
liarly with the ''rotten planks," "put together 
with such perverted skill by the Chicago archi- 
tects." (In 1896.) Several of the message 
recommendations put Roosevelt in the same 
class as the Chicago "geological survivals," 
who are out of "sympathy with men of good 
minds and sound civic morality." 

But above all the din, sounds the Roosevelt 
major note — "more power for the Federal 
government; more power for the President; 
the states have failed." 

It is intimated that Roosevelt will prevent 
the ebb of his popularity by hammering Con- 



398 Roosevelt and the Republic 

gress for radical legislation and attacking the 
now unpopular exponents of "predatory" 
wealth. There are those who see in the mes- 
sage a recrudescence of the third term idea. 
We may be certain that Roosevelt will not 
permit himself to drop out of sight before he 
leaves the White House. Should Taft suc- 
ceed him, Taft must play Martin Van Buren 
to Roosevelt's Andrew Jackson. Otherwise 
let Taft beware. 

[Note. — Some real democrats have accepted 
Roosevelt as sounding a true note of democ- 
racy in his message of January 31, 1908. We 
may be excused for remaining skeptical. The 
man who when in prominent place at thirty- 
eight years of age, with fully mature mind, de- 
nounced as sympathizers with their remote 
skin-clad ancestors men who wished to cur- 
tail the injunction, may now wish sincerely to 
curtail it in the interest of workingmen. 
Elihu Root, Thomas F. Ryan, strategist and 
life-long servant of ''Predatory wealth," may, 
by his great influence over Roosevelt inspire 
him with undying hate for unholy rich men. 
Roosevelt may have changed his mind since he 
attributed attacks upon wealth to mere jeal- 
ousy or envy on the part of the inefficient 
poor. He may now accept ideas of men whom 
he accused of hostility to certain court de- 
cisions because they stand between these men 
and plunder. A President who seized Panama 
possibly has become conscientious. Roosevelt 
may now harbor undying: hate for the special 
privileges he so promptly defended in Chicago 



Roosevelt and the Republic 399 

and Cleveland. If one be sufficiently credulous 
he may believe that Roosevelt has suddenly 
abandoned his dearest convictions, and adopt- 
ed policies he has fought all his life v^ith im- 
placable bitterness. We prefer to regard 
Roosevelt as the same skillful, cunning politi- 
cal general that he v^-as yesterday, last year, 
ten years ago. Viewing him from that point 
an all sufficient reason for his special message 
is his knowledge that the people are aroused 
against ''predatory wealth" and will not be 
denied. Opposition means destruction for 
himself and his party. Advocacy will keep 
his popularity untarnished, his power un- 
diminished. It will enable him to humble his 
enemies, dictate a successor, guide the current 
into safe channels of increased Federal power, 
and maintain in control the party for the pro- 
motion of whose supremacy he has heretofore 
sacrificed some of his dearest convictions. In 
practice Roosevelt has placed the fortunes of 
that party above all else — next to his own per- 
sonal political advancement. Roosevelt, no 
doubt, verily believes Hamiltonian centraliza- 
tion and Roosevelt personal government neces- 
sary to the Republic. Do a majority of Ameri- 
cans agree with him?] 



400 Roosevelt and the Republic 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

CRITICAL VIEW OF ROOSEVELT — HIS QUALITIES, 
ACHIEVEMENTS, HIS IDEALS, AND HIS AIMS. 

Roosevelt is popular — as popular as any 
President in our history. America has a hys- 
terical element. Official hysterics appeal to 
them. With some of our people phydcal size 
means greatness. In them Roosevelt touches 
a responsive chord. Many of our people are 
boastful and self-assertive. Roosevelt is their 
ideal. Fulmination, bluster, clamorousness, 
appeal to some of us. Roosevelt satisfies us. 
Millions of us love Roosevelt for what he is 
not, but what we think him ; for what we think 
he has done, not for what he has actually done. 
We adore a Roosevelt very largely mythical, 
the heroic creation of newspaper imagination. 
Curiously enough, Roosevelt is liked least by 
those who know him best, and best by those 
who know him least. From East to West his 
popularity grows ; from West to East his popu- 
larity wanes. Reactionaries who detest him, 
detest him more because of his attitude and 
his personality than because of his policies. 
Radicals who love him, love him more because 
of the enemies he has made than the work he 
is doing. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 401' 

Roosevelt is ambitious, inordinately am- 
bitious, probably more ambitious than any 
other American President. He is narrow. No 
man in high place has shown greater intel- 
lectual arrogance and intolerance. He cannot 
conceive how any honest and intelligent per- 
son can differ with him upon any point. Dif- 
fering with him is proof positive that one is 
foolish, ignorant, or corrupt. His experience, 
he is certain, covers all experience of all others, 
and his impressions are right, while different 
impressions must necessarily be wrong. 

"There are more things in heaven and earth, 
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philos- 
ophy." ^ " I ^ 

Roosevelt is a partisan. Alexander Hamf 
ton being his political ideal, he distrusts popu- 
lar government profoundly. The masses are 
fools, the sport of rogues, inspired by envy and 
jealousy. It is necessary that a righteous, 
strong man should guard them against them- 
selves as well as others. Government must be 
left to the strong, the efficient, the righteous, 
who are nearly all found among the classes 
who for generations have been wealthy, cul- 
tured and blessed with leisure. These men are 
the best judges of their own strength, right- 
eousness and efSciency. 

Since Roosevelt takes this view, all those 
who take any other view of government are 
ignorant, vicious, visionary, demagogic, crook- 
ed, dangerous. It is therefore the bounden 
duty of every decent man, believing as Roose- 
velt does, to be a partisan, to place partisan 






402 Roosevelt and the Republic 

success above all other considerations, above 
the interests of state or countr^j 

Caution is strikingly developed in Theodore 
Roosevelt. With a front of bluster, passion, 
impulsiveness, his statements turn out pain- 
fully timorous, except when, denouncing some 
person whose tenets or whose actions disagree 
with his own. Every statement he makes has 
as many avenues of escape as the den of the 
red fox. When analyzed, the statement is 
found so qualified and hedged about that it 
asserts a mere platitude, or is of such Delphic 
ambiguity as to mean anything which its au- 
thor may assert it to mean, or to mean noth- 
ing at all. Clamorously audacious statements 
turn out to be mere dust-storms, whirling 
about a grain of sand. Jaggers was reckless 
in committing himself as compared with Theo- 
dore Roosevelt. 

Roosevelt is cunning. Beneath his noise 
and fury is the coldest calculation. He weighs 
his moves most carefully and considers results. 
No more skillful politician than Roosevelt has 
ever sat in the presidential chair. He knows 
politics from precinct club to National Com- 
mittee. To him it is a game like football or 
draw poker. A smashing scrimmage where he 
"hits the line hard." Or a cunning matching 
of wits, where he bluffs, draws or stands pat; 
or has a "square deal." Big game hunters 
have the best training for citizenship and civil- 
ized life. It is a matter of stalking and killing. 

Dramatic, almost melodramatic, is Theodore 
Roosevelt. He is a born showman. Roose- 



RO(jSEVELT AND THE REPUBLIC 403 

velt knows how to produce an effect upon the 
crowd. With natural dramatic instincts of the 
highest order, he has spent a hfetime in de- 
veloping them. If Theodore Roosevelt cannot 
get and hold public attention nobody else need 
try. He would out-Hearst Hearst as a sensa- 
tional journalist. 

Besides, Roosevelt knows how important 
is this talent in politics ; as important as well 
rehearsed stage-business in the theatre. Roose- 
velt is practical. When he wishes to attain 
an object, he uses the means most likely to 
bring results. In such cases Roosevelt has no 
scruples. He would use Satan as his chaplain 
if he knew Satan to have the keys of the King- 
dom, although they had been stolen. Piatt, 
Quay, Addicks, every puissant crook of poli- 
tics, has served Roosevelt's purposes. 

One of the folk-lore stories, the story upon 
which the immortal Goethe founded his still 
more immortal Faust, tells a tale of a certain 
great and wise man selling himself to the Evil 
one. In the grim pagan tale the wise man paid 
the price in a tragic end and an eternity of 
darkness. But good Christian narrators im- 
proved upon that. At the last moment after 
the rnortgaged wise man had enjoyed the king- 
doms of the earth for which he had bargained 
to fall down and worship the Evil one, and 
when the Evil one had come to claim the bar- 
tered soul, the good priest stepped upon the 
scene and exorcised the evil spirit. This wise 
man had had all the good things provided by 
the Evil one and, in addition, still had entree 



'404 Roosevelt and the Republic 

into the Kingdom. He had actually cheated 
the devil out of his due. Roosevelt, with his 
unholy political alliances, and his tainted cam- 
paign funds, is the only modern proving equal- 
ly clever. 

Roosevelt is selfish. He vv^ill tolerate any 
method in support of his ow^n plans, ambitions, 
or schemes, but w^ill denounce with the fiercest 
invective the use of like methods for the bene- 
fit of others. Furthering his fortunes is legiti- 
mately everybody's care. 

Imperiousness is one of the strong points of 
Theodore Roosevelt. No man can continue 
to differ with him on an important tenet or 
policy and retain his good will. No newspaper 
writer can criticise the administration and still 
remain welcome at the White House executive 
offices. Roosevelt cannot conceive that such 
criticism could come from other than un- 
worthy motives. If the writer were not a fool, 
a dunce, or a knave, he would know Roosevelt 
to be right. 

Roosevelt is vindictive. He never forgets 
real or fancied injury, and will wait years to 
*'get even." Wadsworth, Burton, Tyner, 
Bowen, Storer, Mrs. Morris, a whole list of 
unfortunates, have felt and are feeling the 
weight of his implacable displeasure. Regard- 
ing the government and the powers thereof as 
a personal asset of the President, he does not 
hesitate to use them to castigate his enemies 
or reward his friends. Instance, Harriman and 
Paul Morton; Bowen and Francis B. Loomis. 

Veracity is not a Roosevelt virtue. Were 



Roosevelt and the Republic 405 

Washington correspondents in position to 
speak their minds freely, many would tell one 
that no statement made by Roosevelt verbally 
can be relied upon if his own interests will be 
advanced by denying it, or he is embarrassed 
by affirming it. President Roosevelt's reputa- 
tion in this regard with those who have fre- 
quent contact with him is almost notorious. 
In the Harriman, Chandler, Bowen, Parker, 
Storer,and a dozen other episodes where verac- 
ity was at stake, circumstances were against 
Roosevelt. Parker and Harriman absolutely 
proved the President's disingenuousness. Such 
episodes led to an admission by the President 
of the weakness in a statement declaring that 
the President would be responsible for no ver- 
bal assertion, none not appearing over his 
name or in a public document. 

After all, Roosevelt is very human in this 
regard, and if he were not himself so quick to 
hurl the contumelious stone, it might be left 
out of consideration. 

Roosevelt's vanity is colossal ; his egotism 
monumental. They really possess him. Such 
tremendous factors are they in his character 
that they color all his acts. A keen judge of 
the motives of men en masse, he is quite blind- 
ed by flattery to the characters and motives of 
men with whom he comes in close contact. 
Men who say nice things to Roosevelt and 
about Roosevelt can get anythinsf Roosevelt 
has to give. Their appreciation of him is proof 
positive of their wisdom and virtue. These 
qualities with his imperiousness, meddle- 



4o6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

someness, and want of consideration, account 
for the small men Roosevelt has collected 
around him, except where larger men were an 
inheritance, or are supported by interests 
which Roosevelt dare not offend. Vanity and 
egotism have caused Roosevelt to take 
excursions into every field of activity, set- 
tle every mooted question under the sun, 
whether in government, war, science, or theol- 
ogy, and to denounce everybody who differs 
with him. These qualities were strikingly ex- 
hibited in the undignified and childish "nature 
fakir" controversy. 

Moral courage is not characteristic of Roose- 
velt. Once wrong he remains wrong. With 
immovable stubbornness he sticks to a mis- 
take once made, even though it forces him to 
the most puerilely ridiculous pettifogging for 
justification. The Moyer-Haywood incident, 
and the Brownsville episode, may be cited as 
instances in point. Vain egotism, making it 
necessary that the President should be con- 
sidered infallible, is the only explanation of 
these queer actions. And it has made Roose- 
velt unjust. Wounded vanity is largely re- 
sponsible for the brutal treatment of General 
Miles, Moyer and Haywood, the Brownsville 
troops, James N. Tyner, Herbert W. Bowen 
and others. 

Roosevelt is cynical. He attributes mean 
and sordid motives indiscriminately to all men. 
No man of prominence has assailed so many 
other men with such vindictive virulence as 
he. Good motives are never attributed to an 



Roosevelt and the Republic 407 

opponent where his actions can be explained 
by mean and sordid ones. Roosevelt's political 
methods are based upon this view of human 
nature. Says a veteran Washington corre- 
spondent : 

*'Mr. Roosevelt's system is based upon the 
theory that people fool themselves if given the 
initial suggestion, and that hatred is a stronger 
impulse to human action than admiration or 
gratitude. He is always ready to prove an 
alibi, if a thing attributed to him in one quar- 
ter promises to prove more injurious to him 
in another, but however inconsistent may be 
the sentiments and actions attributed to him 
by the various classes of people and antagon- 
istic communities, he accepts all praise, unless 
the conflicting impressions of him come close 
enough in contact to be injurious, and in that 
case he repudiates that which meets favor with 
the fewest persons. 

"Any man, or set of men, desiring to fool 
themselves, are welcome to do so to his bene- 
fit." This correspondent goes on to say that 
Roosevelt gets the support of opponents who 
bitterly hate each other, by castigating each 
so thoroughly as to make the other rejoice. 
''Each praises Mr. Roosevelt for the punish- 
ment which he inflicted upon the other, his 
enemy, and praises the President in order to 
make light of the punishment which he him- 
self has received. By this method Mr. Roose- 
velt wins two supporters if he does not make 
two friends, and he smiles cynically over the 



4o8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

accuracy of his own conception of the frailties 
of human nature." 

While this characterization is hostile, and a 
trifle overdrawn, it is essentially true. This 
method is used not only with individuals but 
also with corporations, communities, factions, 
parties. Some men resent it, resent it bitterly. 
They object being exploited as horrible exam- 
ples. Therefore, Roosevelt has some bitter 
enemies. 

Roosevelt is shallow. In his private career 
he touched American life at the point of the 
New York 'Tour Hundred," and the other 
point of the lawless western frontier. Neither 
gives any true idea of American character and 
American aspirations. Neither is in tune with 
the great heart-beat of the nation. Roosevelt 
comprehends broadly human characteristics 
common to all men, civilized or savage, but he 
does not understand the distinctive character- 
istics and aspirations that have made America 
what it is. 

He sees only the surface of things. Regula- 
tion of trusts, combinations, corporations, 
tariff, taxation, depend upon individuals doing 
good or doing ill. **Good trusts" cannot do 
harm ; "bad trusts" must be restrained. Roose- 
velt has no comprehension of institutional 
wrong; no idea that there is an institutional 
and a democratic side to problems confronting 
the Republic. 

As he sees it, some beneficent political giant 
must rule over men, as little children, and see 
that they deport themselves seemingly. If 



Roosevelt and the Republic 409 

they err, he must punish them individually. 
Benign autocracy, the big stick, the criminal 
courts, these are the only instruments of cor- 
rection, or redress. Taking this view Roose- 
velt threatens to make absolutely useless all 
trust and corporation-restraining laws by mak- 
ing it necessary to prove a combination a 
*'bad" combination before its acts can be de- 
clared unlawful. The very gist of the North- 
ern ::5ecurities decision was that combination 
restraining competition was illegal per se. 

No hypocrite is Roosevelt. Armored in an 
impenetrable shell of self-conceit, no action of 
his own could appear to him other than praise- 
worthy. He has done and received praise for 
many things he has denounced most bitterly 
in others, yet one who knows Roosevelt would 
no more call him a hypocrite than he would 
call Oliver Cromwell a hypocrite. He simply 
can't see himself. 

Roosevelt is inconstant. Necessarily he 
must remain popular if he would carry out his 
plans. With shifting winds of public opinion, 
and changing public conviction, Roosevelt 
must appear to veer. He must be found upon 
the popular side. We find him denouncing 
muckrakers as scarcely less bad than public 
plunderers. Immediately afterward he is of- 
ficially at the head of the pack in full cr}^ after 
the quarry. Soon he is the original ''muck- 
raker" — the man "who turned on the light." 
Roosevelt referred evidently to "muck-raking" 
by others. For years he consistently de- 
nounced attacks upon wealthy corporations or 



4IO Roosevelt and the Republic 

individuals, as promoted by ignorance, jeal- 
ousy, envy. All at once he becomes generalis- 
simo of the attacking party. One may imagine 
the seriousness of the attack. 

"The people who do harm in the end," says 
Roosevelt, **are not the wrong-doers whom all 
execrate ; but they are the men who do not do 
quite as much wrong, but who are applauded 
instead of being execrated." 
, Demagogy is one of Roosevelt's striking 
characteristics. He has played upon every 
string of passion and prejudice to further his 
own ends. Roosevelt knows, as few men in 
history have known, how to play effectively 
upon these passions and prejudices. A few 
years ago those who objected to the abuse of 
the injunction were "geological survivals," 
"not in sympathy with men of good minds nor 
of sound morality." Yet Roosevelt is sending 
special messages to Congress urging legisla- 
tion to meet this very abuse. Roosevelt 
knows how necessary it is that one should lead 
the chase if he would direct it. He therefore 
becomes leader of the most popular public 
movements in order to direct them into his 
own safe harbor. 
/"""^For Roosevelt is a reactionary. No promi- 
/ nent American since Hamilton has set his face 
with such determination toward the setting 
sun for political inspiration. His ideals in 
government are monarchical ideals. Central- 
ization; unlimited power in the executive; 
commingling of executive, legislative and ju- 
dicial powers in the same hands — the hands of 



Roosevelt and the Republic 411 

the executive; imperialism, militarism, caste, 
aristocracy. With Roosevelt the powers of the 
President are "unqualified," plenary, unlimited. 
As he views it, the ''executive must possess 
the executive and magisterial attributes of the 
people and the people retain no undelegated 
attributes nor passive sovereignties." At 
least his practice has so assumed, although 
possibly he would not make such definite 
claim. 

He would not change the constitution. Elihu 
Root, the strategist of the administration, and 
other interests, has pointed out a better way. 
"Sooner or later constructions of the constitu- 
tion will be found to place the power where 
it will be exercised, in the hands of the national 
government." With Roosevelt the govern- 
ment is synonymous with the executive. 
Roosevelt's problem has been to justify this 
construction, to obtain acquiescence in exer- 
tion by the executive of arbitrary power. 
America's impatience, its love of short cuts to 
results, have aided him mightily. 

Do the people want railway rate regulation ? 
Place the power to regulate in the hands of 
the President. Incorporate railways under 
Federal law. Unused reserve power in the 
hands of the state is the obstacle to solving 
this problem. 

People want tariff reduction? Certainly! 
Support the President in making "agreements" 
with foreign executives. It eliminates the ne- 
cessity for legislative action; eliminates Senate 
confirmation of treaties. "Agreements" may 



412 Roosevelt and the Republic * 

not be known to the constitution, but they are 
assumed to be within the sovereign implied 
powers of the President. 

Do we want a canal? Support the President 
in seizing the territory for a site and give him 
authority to construct it according to his own 
sweet will. 

Would you regulate trusts? Incorporate 
them under Federal law; give them into the 
power of the President. 

Do you want forests and mines conserved? 
The President will look after them. His bu- 
reau will take control. 

Is freedom from spoils desirable? Eliminate 
the Senate ; require it to approve as a matter of 
course all the President's appointments. He 
alone can be trusted to handle patronage hon- 
orably. Let him enforce or suspend the civil 
service laws at will. 

Would you have Cuba orderly and happy? 
The President will seize it and rule it through 
an imperial pro-consul. 

You would have Santo Domingo behave it- 
self? Certainly. The President will take it 
over through an "agreement" of his naval of- 
ficer and will administer it through his per- 
sonal representatives. 

The Philippines? Why the President of the 
United States, and the emperor of the Philip- 
pines, is making of them a heaven on earth in 
accordance with the imperial will. The 
weightiest man in the administration says so. 
Philippine subjects of His Majesty are con- 
tented and happy. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 413 

Currency? Finance? Banking? The Presi- 
dent is looking after them. 

Wrong-doing by corporation heads? Presi- 
dent Roosevelt will see that they are punished. 

There is but one answer to every inquiry ; 
one solution for every problem — more power 
for the Federal government — the President. 
It is the same old tune with variations. What- 
ever may be present or absent in President 
Roosevelt's recommendations, one is sure this 
thing is not overlooked — more power for the 
President. 

And the newspaper claque shout "amen !" 
Citizens, feel happy. It is so nice to have all 
of our burdens, troubles, problems and per- 
plexities supported by such willing shoulders. 

Already has been gathered by this method 
colossal powers and prerogatives in the hands 
of the President. He has made the House of 
Representatives a mere tool, bargaining with 
its dictator for legislation which the President 
desires. Roosevelt overshadows Senate and 
courts. No man nor institution can set bounds 
to his activities. All this has been done on the 
plea of protecting popular interests. Roose- 
velt has so skilfully maneuvered in each case 
as to impress the unthinking public with the 
idea that anybody opposing the grant of addi- 
tional executive powers is in league with 
"predatory" interests to defeat reform and per- 
mit the despoiling of the people. Roosevelt's 
newspaper claque and cowardly self-seeking 
politicians in and out of Coneress make such 
a plan possible. Roosevelt believes that if the 



414 Roosevelt and the Republic 

people think they are getting what they want, 
they are indifferent as to the means employed 
in gretting it. 

State integrity is the stronghold which must 
be taken and destroyed before this invasion 
of centralization can finally succeed. As long 
as the reserved powers of the state remain un- 
absorbed by the implied powers of the Federal 
government the centralizing campaign will not 
have reached the ambitious goal of its pro- 
moters. 

This government was grafted upon a founda- 
tion of sovereign states. Colonial fathers knew 
that these states as republics could best meet 
and solve local and internal problems and dan- 
gers. But they would be insecure against ex- 
ternal attack by larger and stronger bodies. 
This danger was more imminent then than it 
is to-day. No republic on a large scale had 
theretofore been successful. But one plan 
promised permanence — small individual states 
with power over local internal affairs ; a gen- 
eral government looking after external inter- 
ests and interstate relations. At all events, 
with the states firmly determined to retain 
their individuality, it was the only practicable 
plan. This plan was tried. It has succeeded 
for more than a century. Hamilton tried to 
destroy it by centralization. He failed. Roose- 
velt is repeating the assault. 

Stealthily Chief Justice Marshall absorbed 
power for the Federal government. Implied 
powers and general welfare meant more than 
all the rest of the constitution. The law. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 41J 

against impairment of contracts by legislation 
covered a multitude of grabs. But the process 
was slow. The executive methods of Roose- 
velt work more quickly. Since the Spanish 
war this invasion has made more progress than 
it had made in the previous one hundred 
years. Carried to its logical conclusion it will 
make the states as Hamilton would have made 
them, mere administrative departments of the 
Federal government. Then power will flow 
from the center outward, rather than from the 
members toward the center. Add to this 
Roosevelt's assumed right of adopting policies 
not passed upon, or disapproved, at the polls, 
and the executive becomes supreme. 

In the carrying out of this campaign, the 
states must be discredited. Perplexing prob- 
lems are to be met. Shackled by the power of 
the Federal courts, the states have failed to 
solve these problems. If a state strikes a 
trust, the courts find such action unconstitu- 
tional. "Grab" has been given other shields 
in the prohibitions against taking property 
without just compensation and without due 
process of law. Strange uses are made of con- 
stitutional clauses intended to guard individual 
rights. Railway rates are lowered by state 
laws. It is found that the legislatures have 
exceeded their powers. 

At every state line, in every state capital, 
have Federal courts built forts in which preda- 
tory interests, state-attacked, may find sanctu- 
ary. 

Shackle a man's feet and tie his hands, and 



4i6 Roosevelt and the Republic 

nobody will expect from him a wonderful ex- 
hibition of prowess in either fighting or run- 
ning. States just as fully shackled fail to pro-' 
tect their citizens from the powers that prey. 
Hamiltonian theorists, Roosevelt the loudest, 
cry failure of state government. The public 
sees the failure and is impressed. It overlooks 
the shackles. 

Corporation, trust, transportation problems 
have not been solved by the states. Therefore 
must Federal authorities take full control. 
Clamorous campaigns are conducted ; impres- 
sive Federal statutes signed; respectable bu- 
reaus installed; dramatic prosecutions are be- 
gun. Wonders have been done by the Fed- 
eral government where the states have failed. 
Certainly, the voters will give the President 
power. 

This is the crucial issue now in the Republic. 
It overshadows all other issues, for it means 
life or death. Only by giving citizens full and 
intimate control of local governmental func- 
tions can we build up or maintain a strong, 
healthy, intelligent citizenship. Without a 
strong, healthy, intelligent citizenship, no re- 
public can endure. Power in the hands of the 
central government in a country like this is 
necessarily out of the control of the mass of 
citizens. It is too remote. Roosevelt's policy 
in this regard, if successful, means death to 
the Republic. 

Better all the force and violence of the petty 
South American states than the orderly death 
of a centralized empire. One means life, hope. 



Roosevelt and the Republic 417 

progress; the other, decay, retrogression, dis- 
solution. Division into small communities 
seems nature's way of keeping civilization suf- 
ficiently fluid for progress. But one nation on 
earth has defied death and time. It is a non- 
military, decentralized nation. Its people are 
no more intelligent, its officers no more virtu- 
ous than those of other nations. 

Friends of the Republic must save the states 
for local control, for local self-government, if 
to do so they shall destroy the Federal court 
system belov^ the Supreme Court and relegate 
their jurisdiction to the courts of the several 
states. They must save the states if to do so 
the Supreme Court itself shall be restrained 
upon vital issues by an overruling popular 
vote giving laws constitutional sanction. They 
must save the state if to do so the executive 
must be denied all participation in legislation. 
When local self-government of the most ample 
sort is made impracticable, our democratic Re- 
public will have become a thing of history. 
Better to solve trust, railway and corporation 
problems by confining corporations absolutely 
to the states creating them, than to run the 
risk of state destruction by centralization of 
power over them. 

Huge size is Roosevelt's idea of greatness. 
If to huge size you add great physical prowess 
you have reached his national ideal. He would 
have an empire expanding over the earth by 
the strength of good right arm. A nation of 
great breeders and great fighting men is to 
him the nation's truly great. With guns, 



4i8 Roosevelt and the Republic 

ships, and fighting men, it must grimly, resist- 
lessly, relentlessly, pursue its career, chastiz- 
ing to its own standards of holiness weaker 
nations which may come in its path, scattering 
its spawn over the earth. It must be a dull, 
beneficent, fecund giant who insists that even 
pigmies shall be cast in the same mold. The 
serene, self-contained service of such a country 
as Switzerland fails to arouse Roosevelt en- 
thusiasm. 

Roosevelt would not have the overmastering 
empire of his dreams regard in the least differ- 
ent races, different environment, different con- 
ditions. All must accept the same standards 
and forms of government, or turn the business 
of government over to the predominant giant 
nation. 

Since Roosevelt^s idea is growth in size and 
a conquering progress over the earth, he would 
have such internal organization as best to 
support such an ideal. Government must be 
so planned as to be most efficient in aggression. 
Centralization is necessary to aggressive mili- 
tary efficiency. Roosevelt would have cen- 
tralization. As instrument he would have 
great armies of regular soldiers, carefully 
trained as were the Roman legions. Great 
navies must bear his flag. Patient toilers he 
must have who murmur not against the weight 
of this crushing load, for it is all for the na- 
tion's glory. Subject nations must cheerfully 
bend their necks for the yoke for as it is 
righteous that the great should rule over them, 
it Is also righteous that they should submit, ^ 



I 



Roosevelt and the Republic 419 

As Roosevelt sees it government is a thing 
handed down from a governing class to a gov- 
erned class. The quality of the government 
depends entirely upon the wisdom and good 
intentions of the rulers. They are to say what 
is best for the governed. Therefore the need 
of centralization, the unhampered executive 
will. His power must not be circumscribed. 
Especially must he be free to override laws so 
as to meet properly what look like emergencies 
to him. 

Such a plan of government falls naturally 
into the bureaucratic form. Commissioners re- 
sponsible only to the executive become the 
best means of carrying out his will. If the 
executive could attend to all details himself, 
there would be no need of the commissions, 
but even Roosevelt finds this trying. ] 

Once launched, these bureaus naturally ex- 
pand and absorb. Instead of being instru- 
ments of administration, they become seats of 
power. Growing like a tree, by concentric 
outside rings, they tend, like the overgrown 
Linden, to rot at the heart. Then they be- 
come most important in protecting from the 
misguided vagaries of citizens the institutions 
they started out to control in the interests of 
citizens. Leagues of red tape wound about 
everv problem, protect like an armor from 
outer pressure. Finally the executive on the 
one side becomes as powerless as the people 
on the other. Special interests, bureau pro- 
tected, grow in rank luxuriance.^ Only the 
man with a sword keen enough to rip away the 



420 Roosevelt and the Republic 

husks of red tape can get to the heart of the 
difficulty. It is a most excellent way of mum- 
mifying government. How many thousands 
of devoted men have sacrificed themselves 
vainly beating against the immovable Russian 
bureaucracy? 

Roosevelt is doing much to realize this ideal. 
He has made most wonderful progress in the 
creation of commissions (bureaus). He has 
the big navy of his dreams. The army may 
easily come. Imperialistic expansion is well 
under way. We have had a colonial empire 
governed by the President as autocrat — 
actually if not nominally. The personal gov- 
ernment by executive will is now enjoyed. 
Later will come the bureau power, the prin- 
ciple of which we have accepted. Then will 
come government by bureaus with the execu- 
tive when weak a convenient figurehead, when 
strong an irresponsible autocrat. 

In his short lease of power President Roose- 
velt cannot bring about the flowering of such 
a system. He can only plant the seeds and 
see that they take firm root. 

President Roosevelt has emphasized the 
need of strong citizenship. His bureaucratic 
policies are the best possible instruments for 
its destruction. ^Take away power from the 
states and you necessarily remove political 
problems from popular control.^ They lose in- 
terest in the state for it cannot help them. It 
means nothing to them. Soon they find that 
they cannot control their general government, 
and they lose interest in that. If cared for at 



Roosevelt and the Republic 421 

all it IS cared for as "the little father" which 
will provide. 

Removed from the life-giving touch of citi- 
zen control, the bureaucratic central govern- 
ment rots from within. Afterward comes gen- 
eral decay and national death. When the citi- 
zen's power of resistance was destroyed all 
was lost. It remained only to ring the death 
knell. 

If denied participation in legislation, as the 
President must be denied, if we are to set 
bounds to expanding executive power, Roose- 
velt would have made a good President. He 
is an efficient executive. If kept within the 
bounds of the constitution, permitted mere ad- 
visory suggestion and passive disapproval of 
legislation, Roosevelt would not have been a 
bad executive. But his effort to control legis- 
lation and court decision and make the execu- 
tive the whole government, has produced in 
him a most sinister and dangerous President. 
Much legislation has been forced through by 
Roosevelt. Hundreds of tons of bureau re- 
ports have been turned out. But there has 
been no great accomplishment and none is 
promised. Achievement has been most 
meagre. No striking progress has been made 
in transportation, trust or taxation problems. 
He has adopted but one vital policy of ben- 
eficent promise — the conserving to the people 
of their natural resources in mines, forests, and 
streams. No more important policy could be 
adopted. While Roosevelt did not originate 



422 Roosevelt and the Republic 

this policy his adoption of it should be granted 
full meed of praise. 

As an agitator Roosevelt has done some 
good work. Appealing to the popular imagina- 
tion as he does, he has popularized the ideas 
of bolder men of greater penetration and enter- 
prise. The very hubbub he has raised has kept 
these problems up for public discussion. Some 
truth has been found in spite of Roosevelt. 
Predatory wealth is less respectable than it 
was ten years ago. But Roosevelt might have 
done vastly greater service in this regard. His 
pathological partiality for Delphic ambiguity 
has served to cloud almost every issue he has 
touched. Truth has been obscured in a cloud 
of dust. The public mind is confused. Few 
can now separate the vital from the ephemeral, 
the wheat from the chafif. Some of the most 
uncompromising reactionaries and some of the 
most pronounced radicals are shoulder to 
shoulder with Roosevelt claiming him as their 
champion. But Roosevelt's service as an agi- 
tator is slight indeed as compared with the 
harm he has done in perverting democratic 
ideals and centralizing governmental power. 
Through him the people of the United States 
have not only tolerated but accepted and ap- 
plauded a government as personal as that of 
a Czar. 

Roosevelt's place in history is difficult to 
forecast. A scrub oak immediately in front of 
us may overtop in our vision the lofty but dis- 
tant mountain peak. Roosevelt's size cannot 
be determined finally until he moves farther 



Roosevelt and the Republic 423 

away. Certainly he will grow smaller with 
the lapse of time. Whether he will shrink into 
a mere scrub-oak of statesmanship is still an 
open question. 

As we view it, his future size will depend 
upon the future course of the Republic. This 
none but a prophet can foresee. Centuries are 
but years in the nation's life. A presidential 
term but the episode of a fortnight. What it 
may have accomplished no man can say in 
advance. But the seed for the future harvest 
may be sown in a day. More than that — a 
death germ may be planted in a moment. 
What moment is beyond our ken. Seeds of 
the white death lie dormant in many a robust 
bosom, unsuspected for years. It took Rome 
fourteen hundred years to disintegrate after 
the beginning of the end. 

If this nation should become a great imperi- 
alistic military power, inspiring admiration by 
its splendor and fear by its momentary 
strength; if after a hectic feverish course of 
apparent brilliancy, should ensue the palsied 
inefficiency of bureaucracy, with the inevitable 
death and disintegration, some future Gibbon, 
telling some future people, lusty in the 
strength of young manhood, the story of its 
rise and fall, would designate the time of the 
Spanish war as the day upon which the seeds 
of the white death had been sown. Theodore 
Roosevelt would be written down as the Presi- 
dent who had seen to it that these seeds had 
taken root. And Roosevelt would be remem- 
bered. 



4^4 Roosevelt and the Republic 

''First freedom and then glory ; when that 
fails, wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at 
last." 

Roosevelt would come in the beginning of 
the epoch of glory. 

On the other hand, should the bright sun- 
light and pure air of life-giving freedom 
strengthen our Republic to throw off the men- 
ace of this white death — destroy this cankering 
germ which imperial ambition has planted in 
its bosom ; if defying time, our Republic should 
live a democratic sanctuary through the ages, 
then the period of Roosevelt will be but a 
feverish, unsubstantial dream. He shall then 
be counted as one of the evanescent, inconse- 
quent incidents of our national life. 

But one enigma will stand through time and 
eternity: — why democrats devoted to the Re- 
public could have come to regard Roosevelt 
as their champion. 



THE end. 



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